


Pathfinder: 3-to-1

by Seraph_Years, Silver Blue (Seraph_Years)



Category: Original Work, Zootopia (2016)
Genre: Abrupt Ending, Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe, Chaptered, Coming of Age, Gen, Inspired by JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Plot Twists, Rating: M, Sexual References, Time Travel, Urban Fantasy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-09
Updated: 2020-08-09
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:41:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 54,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25809016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Seraph_Years/pseuds/Seraph_Years, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Seraph_Years/pseuds/Silver%20Blue
Summary: Anthology consisting of Gradient, Spectrum, and Mile of a Different Color, the three installments of the Insight series.





	1. Gradient

[May 1st: A New Life Under the Sun]

Running.

Running.

Arthur’s running in a grassy field, his expression saying that he wants to get somewhere as fast as possible. He loves to take the initiative in everything he does, so he is getting every new thing out of the way by running to a city that, according to him, “has all sorts of interesting people and things to do.” Eventually, after 10 minutes he reached the new city that has direct ties to the still-yet-incomplete Metaverse. “Well, look at that. I managed to do everything step-by-step today. Nothing out of order, but the Metaverse is still one step ahead of me. Guess I better see what’s going on up there.” Arthur says triumphantly. His assignments are important, though he will not say what they are.

[May 2nd: Temper]

The minute he arrived there, he could barely see the towers and buildings lined in front of the massive water’s edge. Just then, pink-colored light shone in the sky and gave Arthur a message. “If you want to find it so badly, then let me take you to where you need to go.”

Arthur's was thrown inside the Metaverse, which he thought was incomplete. It was just a castle hallway. He opened the door, noticed he was wearing golden, slim plate armor with matching helmet and sword, and checked out the old-style paintings on the wall. One of them showed an ordinary hilly road with Arthur's name on the bottom. The one next to it was the same, but it showed Quincy with his entire body covered in vines, sitting on a platform of sorts. Quincy's name was on the bottom. “Was I supposed to be on this painting, and yet since I'm here, I'm not present there? Are they stuck in the paintings? And what's with the vines?” Arthur asked to himself. He couldn’t even see the other, shadowed-out paintings further down the hallway. Then, when he didn’t even see it coming...

“Why hello there!”

Arthur staggered back when she spoke those words. “What brings you here?” he asked.

She introduced herself as Impulse. She is an energetic, kind soul that took up a large blue sword bigger than herself. Blond hair, blue overalls and jeans and more hair decorations than you can name, she had the entire package. “I'm here to make you into a better person, and I'm gonna do that the only way I know how!” she exclaimed.

She took him to a clock tower that she had boosted by running an arrow through the gears. The tower had a platform, railing included, that allowed for easy and safe navigation.

“Welcome to the Tower of Initiative.” she said joyfully.

[May 3rd: Tower of Initiative]

“This'll be the place where you improve your skills. Each of the gears on this wall represent your duties in Neo-Lowercase, which is where that city is found. If you have a problem doing ANYTHING because of your lack of focus, then you come here and turn things around.” she explained.

Arthur turned around and realized that Impulse was putting him on a hamster wheel. “I'm sorry, but I expected something far more interesting than a clock tower filled with gears that symbolize regular, everyday things that a real person can do without fail. Give me something challenging, like a journey through a foreign land or something! I get bored when I sit up in here and turn gears all day! Surely there must be something else in the Metaverse I can do! Come on…”

Arthur began to walk out of the clock tower, eager for more things to do. Impulse tried to coach him to fix his issues, but Arthur would have none of it. He wanted more than what Impulse had to offer him, as a man of freedom. He ventured outside of it and found a dimension filled with varying hues of the entire rainbow. Connecting the walls together were cables of unusual colors, appearing to be made from the same stuff as the rest of the place. It was like something out of a comic, except with a distinctive style to it. As if influenced by graffiti works. But it was not graffiti. Arthur did not know what it was, and he did not care. He just wanted to explore, and little did he know that he had more of a connection to it than he thought. He was in for a hard surprise, however. A metallic worm flew at him and he instinctively took out his sword and beheaded it. However, the worm still managed to knock him off the platform. Impulse saw all of this and responded by jumping up and catching Arthur as he fell, making sure to land in a reasonable spot. Once she did, the worm fell next to them, bleeding and dead. Impulse checked to make sure Arthur was okay, but got confused when he started growing blue rabbit ears…

[May 4th: Exhibit MASTER]

After they both hit the ground, Impulse gets up and checks to see if Arthur's fine. Then, she notices a minor detail about him. “What's the matter? You seem to have grown something…”

“Ah, nothing, it's just a minor.... scratch?”

Arthur stared in amazement at his body: he had begun to grow fur on the left side! It was blue fur at that, and the Quincy painting he saw back in the hallway also had blue fur.… Either way, Arthur got up and looked past the horizon, seeing all the various… colors of the new world. He also saw the dead worm that he beheaded. He started to question why that worm looked so otherworldly. The metal making up its shell looked so alien. Arthur thought that there might be other enemies like that worm that would be tougher and stronger than that.

“You know anything about this world?” he asks.

“Not a thing. I have only been here for a little over a day. I never knew such an environment existed. I was only told about the clock tower.” she replies.

“Who locked you up in that clock tower?” he asks.

“Can't say. Before I asked what was going on, I was transported there and forced to install those gears. I noticed you refused to turn them, and I was wondering why you showed up with such behavior. I did not want to turn them either, being such a grueling task. But hey, I was out of ideas before you came along. When you refused to turn them too, I was starting to think that the gears were connected to something a little more… special. Like something was repelling us away from them. It IS the Tower of Initiative, so it has to do with people not wanting to complete their tasks as directed. If they turn the gears without fussing about it, then they can get something complete. I do not know what it is. All I know is that somebody HAS to turn the gears.” she explains. She sounds like she’s concealing a fact. Like she’s being bossed around by somebody. Arthur noticed this, but didn’t care much for now.

“I'll do it.” he stated.

"You WHAT?” she shouted.

Arthur leaped back onto the platform he fell off and ran towards the large gears on the wall by following the guides on the walkway. He turned one, and it lit up. A techno voice said, "Gear Alpha now turning.” Arthur got confused until a large, glowing anthropomorphic green rabbit spawned on the premises and literally blew him away. Arthur and Impulse’s back-and-forth conversation was quick and energetic.

“Arthur! Lead it back here and kill it!”

“Why can't I just kill it in the clock tower?”

“It's completely untouchable in there!”

"How do you know that?"

"Believe me, I tried! That is how I got in here, I was tasked to kill one of these things and activate the tower's gears! Only when I led it into Exhibit MASTER did I figure it out--"

"Time out. That alien space looking place I landed in and fought that worm in is called Exhibit MASTER?"

"Indeed, and that's where I destroyed monsters like that over there. Now lead it into Exhibit MASTER and eliminate it!"

Arthur let the monster follow him on the way there and once it stepped outside the tower, the rabbit shielded its eyes, perfect enough for Arthur to kick it off the platform and have Impulse finish the job by cutting its head off. It disappeared without a trace. Their conversation was strategic and teamwork-centric.

"How did the rabbit disappear and not the worm?" He brought up.

"Real strange how killing enemies works. Maybe the worm is native to MASTER and thus doesn't vanish when it dies there!" She replied.

"Real nice. What if I do this?" He states.

Arthur drags the worm corpse up to the tower and sure enough, it vanishes.

"I'm gonna figure this out. Just you wait. Right now, I have a place to go. Maybe this place will update itself when the time comes. I have more to do HERE than I do out THERE. Primarily, there’s a little bit of an interference out there I must take care of that’ll allow me to do a bit more in here." He says before departing.

Just when Arthur was about to leave the Metaverse, he caught a glimpse of his reflection, and sure enough he looked exactly like Quincy! He was a bit surprised to see that happen, but he just had to get used to it. The mind can change, like everyone else.

"Guess that's my new name now. Quincy. Did I take up this mantle when the world changed? Either way, I’ll get used to it. "

He transformed into his Quincy self from back in the Metaverse when he arrived at the same water’s edge he was at before.

"Guess it really is all animals."

“Wait, hold on. How is she knowledgeable about the mysterious city?”

[May 5th: Decisionary]

Solution City: A massive metropolis of streets, skyscrapers, and gigantic crowds near the plaza. It is a whole lot more active than it has been, so most of the action takes place where the masses are less likely to notice. The meeting area is square in front of the plaza, in a cove protected by a gigantic clock arch that displays the time according to GMT –15 (EST). As such, the Archway Clock is an important landmark that people stand under every so often. The cove behind the arch also links to the rest of Solution City and its various locations. It is a popular tourist site, and as a result, many accommodations are made to support travelers coming to and from the city.

“Listen closely to my words. I have a tiny badge in my hand, easily wearable. It is black, has a mysterious symbol on it, and can grant you all the power in the world. It's yours free.”

“Is there a catch to this?” Quincy asks.

“Hmm... You may lose something of value. Something you treasure most. Either way, you will not be going back once you take this badge. Do you accept?”

Two voices play through Quincy’s head. “Don't. do it. Stay with what you know. If you grab this badge, something important WILL change, even if it's right in front of you!”

“If you break this promise you made to yourself all this time ago, your entrance to Solution City will be most welcome to you. Now don't take that badge.”

Quincy grabs the badge anyway, motivated by a powerful figure that left him with no choice. What was the guy gonna do anyway, hurt Quincy once he rejects the badge? He DID say Quincy was gonna lose “something of value,” but Quincy did not think it was gonna be that bad.

It was.

“Okay, I got the badge, now what?”

A whole assortment of powerful tools called Programs are now accessible to Quincy for him to use at any time! There are 5 Programs to use: A projectile made of fire that is flung from the hands, a shockwave directed at the ground, a burst of wind that allows for fast travel in the air, a teleportation Program, and finally a weapon buff mechanic. That last one lets Quincy's base weapons (like his gun and melee attacks) get stronger. Quincy feels quite powerful with this new batch of weaponry! However...

"Solution City! It's turning a bizarre shade of red!"

Indeed. The clock at the front of the meeting area spun so fast it spawned a new type of enemy known as an Archangel Remnant. Remnants are enemies derived from the Partials that are stronger and smarter than their kin. This one was a knight with glowing red wings and armor. It looked tough, but it lacked peripheral vision.

"You guys (The Archangel and the Lupus Remnants, which are wolves that transform into spears to harm their enemies, in addition to the ordinary bites and scratches) look tough. Too bad I am gonna have to rush through you for a bit. I'm in a real big hurry."

Quincy uses his Shockwave Program, which destroys the Lupuses and cripples the Archangel. He ran inside the building, only to find everyone corrupted by the red influence that the Archangel was made from.

"You know, this all had to happen because you picked my Eraser Badge. Besides, wouldn't you like to know how I even gave you that opportunity?" Maxis, Quincy’s new enemy, asked.

"I'm more concerned about fixing this mess." Quincy stated.

Quincy finds a Horizon Badge on a table in the living room of the meeting area, (it is green and it glows in the dark unlike Eraser Badges) but as he reaches for it, it slides on the table on its own and flies away from Quincy as he tries to reach it. Not even Wind Boost can propel him far enough up in the air to reach the Badge. Suddenly the culprit, Maxis 15, appears on the roof of the building, which is now covered in graffiti-like energy. Its inhabitants were enraged by Maxis' Influence Badge, which he powered up to its max potential.

"So, what do you think? The Horizon Badge is quite powerful, but I'm gonna keep it on me before you think about what you've done." Maxis said.

Quincy was too ticked off to even think, but at least he gets to release his anger on two Ravine Remnants (negatively influenced regular individuals. Whatever powers they had on them are improved, but if they DIDN'T have powers, then they would fall apart and turn into a regular Remnant, like a Lupus or an Ornitho (owl).

"Don't worry about them. It's the ground you should be concerned about." He warned al three with a smile on his face.

The ground has become an electrical circuit! Quincy jumped back with Wind Boost, knocking the Ravines aside. He then pushed them back outside with Wind Boost again, shocking them to the point where their influence was removed from them, freeing them from having to be harmed by Maxis' badge! They looked around confused before returning inside and thanking Quincy for his contribution. The two are both anthropomorphic animals, like everyone in Solution City (except a select few).

"We have no time to waste, you two. We have to defeat Maxis." Quincy said with urgency.

(Solid Deer. A white deer with black highlights. Have you seen one of those before?)

"What about the Horizon Badge I left on the table-- (looks to said table) oh, it's gone."

"Yep, Maxis has it and unless we take it from him there's no way to even hurt him. The Eraser Badge's arsenal is useless against Maxis." Quincy said.

(Tall, slender cheetah. That was her, Shader Complex.)

"Can we be of assistance?" She asked.

"Well now, that'd be most sound. What abilities do you girls have?" Quincy asks.

They showed them off when Solid Deer turned her fist into rock (Stone Punch) and slammed a Leporid Remnant (rabbit enemy) out of the window. Deer then turned around, picked up a glass spike, then threw it hard enough (Strongman Toss) to pierce an Archangel in the head, making it vanish instantly. Shader Complex then projected a rainbow shield around her and leaped into a crowd of Remnants. Her shield then slowed down time for a bit before detonating (Multicolor Fulmination), leaving Shader unharmed.

"How long you've been using these?" Quincy asked curiously.

"Long enough. I feel like these powers came from somewhere far. Maybe--" Solid Deer replied.

"So, you just got these powers, you do not know where they came from, and now they're making you think you had them for a long time. Seriously, what's up with this new arrangement?" Quincy wondered.

\------------------------------------------

[May 6th: Decisionary, Part 2]

The meeting room did highly resemble a ballroom, but it was stylized with bluish-green highlights and lines streaking back and forth throughout the room. Quincy was too busy fighting Remnants to be amazed at the impressive size and detail of the meeting room. Fitting for the entrance to the rest of the city. There were also two doors on the left and right sides of the middle of the area that led to the stairways to the 2nd floor. Each side led to a different area.

"Go to the second floor, there's too many Remnants here! It is on the left and right sides of the meeting room. I believe that defeating Maxis will clear the room of the enemies." Quincy commanded.

Quincy darted to the left door, climbing up the staircase after. Everything was so richly decorated, and there were pictures of Solution City's most well-known duo, the Miracle Couple, hung on the wall. "I've seen those two before. Is there a reason they are so popular? Maybe it's a couple done right." Quincy mused to himself as he climbed his way up to the second floor, which is also ransacked with Remnants. He had to make it through this floor to make it to the third floor, which held the entrance to the roof. Quincy thinks that Maxis made it up there. In any case, he readied his Programs and shot a fireball at a Vulpes Remnant, pushing it aside. He smacked aside the others (Badge users can swipe, punch, kick, and block with greater efficiency than regular people. This is due to the badges improving on the user's strength and durability.) and set off for the third floor. The Remnants tried to drag him by his leg, but Wind Boost propelled him to the third floor, which got him met with 4 Remnants (Two Archangels, a Lupus and a Vulpes) alongside Maxis.

"There's no stopping you, is there? I still have the badge you want, and you are not gonna get it until you make one last decision. I also want you to give up something else of value." Maxis challenged.

"Which is?" Quincy asked furiously.

"Give me that Solution Badge in your Pocket. You know, the one with the green Z on it. Give it to me and I'll--" Maxis demanded.

Quincy simply equipped it and rained fireballs on the Remnants (Meteor Shower), destroying them all. This forced Maxis to retreat to the roof, where Quincy gave chase. They both met each other high above the plaza. Thankfully, nobody could see them.

"I'm the one who rigged your decision to fall into my hands. I hid the Horizon Badge in the meeting room because I knew you would try to go for that one instead. When I found the Eraser Badge, I created Impulse with it and had her spin Gear Lambda to allow you to-- no, FORCE you to choose that black badge you have on. You can't take it off until you beat me, so there's no use trying." Maxis taunted. He wasn’t willing to let the Horizons Badge go anytime soon.

Quincy threw a fireball at Maxis, to no effect. He then tried the shockwave thing. Still no effect. Finally, he took out his gun before the two girls showed up and stopped him from firing upon Maxis.

\-------------------------------------------------------

[May 7th: The Fight on the Roof and Exhibit MASTER’s Return]

"We're not gonna let you fight Maxis without a little arrangement." Solid Deer said.

“And what is that?" Quincy asked respectfully.

"Our assistance." Shader Complex replied.

Instead of letting Maxis monologue, the two girls run at him, badges equipped. Maxis simply summons a bunch of Remnants, but Quincy uses Meteor Shower to destroy them. Deer's attempts to smack him are met with Maxis kicking her off the roof. Her freefall and later collision concluded with a thud that the whole plaza could notice. Shader Complex meanwhile tries to approach him slowly, slowly enough so that Maxis can be distracted. "I don't know why you're approaching me so slowly. You could just go ahead and beat me while I'm just standing here..." Maxis taunted Shader Complex. "Actually, that's not my plan." Shader replied. Just then, Arthur teleported behind Maxis and carefully swiped the Horizon Badge from his coat pocket. Maxis saw this and tried to swing at Quincy. Quincy stepped back and had Shader restrain him while Quincy readied his hands. Maxis just flipped Shader over and put up his hands, predicting Quincy's attack. Swing after swing, the rabbit on two feet kept throwing punches. His attacks did not land, but he did not stop there. He grabbed Maxis' head and readied his snare. An explosion of colors, his badge gave off as Maxis flew back without a second thought. "You have done well, but this isn't the end!" Maxis commented around the bend. Quincy’s last move was a bit of a surprise as he whipped the waters about, creating a tide. With a wave and a whisper, the waters came hither and without a second thought Maxis was withered. "All you did to me was make my month weirder." Quincy said to a vanished Maxis.

"So, this is a badge that works by rhyming in free verse, huh? Never would have thought that it would work that way. I don't really know what its powers are, but I will discover them as time goes on." Quincy mused.

He did not have time left to contemplate as he got rushed into the Metaverse. His vision spun in front of him creating a rapid swirl of colors. Arthur/Quincy had returned to the Tower of Intiative and there she was. Impulse had transformed into Experiment Alpha which is a monstrous entity with purple wings and body, with Gear Lambda serving as her weapon, the Eraser Badge. This time it was far more powerful, able to create purple energy weapons like swords, spears, and cannons. Arthur’s Horizon Badge, however, had a unique ability on its own. "Why did you kill my master?!" Alpha cried out. Arthur did not care about that, given that Maxis AND Alpha are figments of his imagination, the former having willed himself into existence. Arthur started this off by summoning some wood spikes with the Horizon Badge. None except the biggest one hit Alpha, but she got up and retaliated with an energy spear. Arthur put up his arms and blocks hard as he can. He could not use Wind Boost because Alpha had his Eraser Badge. The area they were fighting in was rapidly shifting. None of the gears on the wall were ticking, but the gears that made the clock tower move were shifting intermittently to the point where the time on the clock was unreliable. Eventually, Arthur came to his stopping point and used his Solution Badge to activate the clock tower's Experiment Gears. The joint force of every gear moving at once stopped time right on its tracks. "See there? I knew I could not escape your overwhelming strength. That is why time is doing my job for me. Now, watch this!" Quincy explained. His Solution Badge lit up, and Crosswave Platinum appeared from behind Quincy with a bluish-green broadsword that had a stylized Z emblazoned on the cross guard. It was a hero's weapon for a hero's job. "Behold, the Solution Relics! Treasured by the Miracle Couple for years, these fine pearls were sealed up in the vault of the city. Only those who deserved to wield them were allowed to. I have been given the power to wield one of these relics, the Solution Sword. You may not see me perform this fatal strike on you at this moment, but you will feel every last second of pain I am about to inflict on you. I have all the time in the world." Quincy them took one quick swipe at Alpha. True to his words, Alpha could only see and feel his time moving, not hers. She was still stuck there in her attacking stance. Swipe after swipe Alpha could feel. Like getting cut with a knife hot enough to melt ice in 5 seconds. She didn't know that the Tower of Initiative was receptive to badges from Solution City. Maxis only told her to spin gears. Either way, Alpha was all the following: confused, defeated, heartbroken, saddened, and angry. This she could feel as she vanished.

"And so, time moves once again." Quincy says.

The time unfroze. It's a miracle: Exhibit MASTER revealed itself out of the front door to be more expansive than last time. Filled with rolling hills, psychedelic purple skies and an abundance of metallic wildlife, Quincy just had to go explore it. However, behind the joy of it all was an invisible wall with an ominous presence. Quincy couldn't see anything, yet he still knew someone was hiding. He confirmed his doubts when he shot the glass behind him. Once. Twice. Three times he fired his pistol. The glass shards that flew behind him revealed a similar looking figure to Alpha, but as a green wolf with a black-winged outline and body. "I've been active. Do you want to know more?" the figure asked with a grin so evil and a voice so deep and monstrous that even some of the metalloids in the background slinked away. It was so harsh to see some of those dangerous predators suddenly turn back and hide at the sight of such a fierce presence. Quincy got terrified himself, thinking that these predators weren't so bad. He didn't know about forces of nature like these running about. "Hey. You there. I've been waiting to see your face... AGAIN." he growled. Quincy nervously pointed his gun at the source of the voice. "I'm not here yet...!" Before Quincy could fire his gun at the figure, that wolf, Mozart II, appeared from the shadows and forced Quincy down to the ground. "Tell me your darkest secrets. I'll build them up with a foundation you'll NEVER FORGET!" The wolf guy had gone mad. Quincy was way too underprepared for this. He had previously seen the wolf a few times in Solution City and they even got along and became good partners. After he had vanished one day under unforeseen circumstances, Mozart went insane and dragged a perfectly innocent person down to parts unknown. Quincy could still hear his crying shrieks in the background. It unsettled him to the max. "Please, just stop..." he kept crying. It just turned Quincy off. Mozart did this to him all because he couldn't have his way with the world and turned to the worst part of the world to gain everlasting power. "I don't know what happened to you. You used to be a good person. What caused you to turn to the dark side so fast?!" Quincy questioned. "Your place doesn't have much value. I plan to torch it and bring it to ruin. If it wasn't for that bunny with the iron staff, though, I would have done so. What brought you to my domain?" Mozart explained and questioned. Quincy didn't want to respond, he only wanted to END Mozart.

\------------------------

[May 8th: A Flash of Pink]

The brink of death would not keep Quincy for long, however. Within a couple of seconds ranging on minutes, a new and colorful individual from nowhere appears from the shadows and kicks Mozart so hard that his armor briefly shrinks. "I'll do you like you did to that kind soul. I'll make sure you never become exposed again!" she shouted to him. Her entire body was coated in pink, right own to her eye color. This anthropomorphic wolf looked like the girliest thing ever made, and yet she had the aura of a fiercely protective woman. Like nothing could stop her from an act of heroism even if she had to brush with death for so long they could have a pep talk. All pink, all serious. Quincy had seen nothing like it! "Kind of a cliché line, don't you think?" Quincy responded. "Don't move until this monster is dead." the pink character said. All Quincy could see was pink ribbons here and there, flying past his vision. Mozart was getting himself handed to on a silver platter. Quincy thought that Pinky had wanted Mozart to feel every strike, tap, and ounce of movement she inflicted upon him. He was right. Within moments, Mozart was dead and Quincy was still trying to get up from Mozart's harsh feats of strength.

“I'll tell you my name if you tell me yours." Quincy said.

"You may call me Variance. However, this is not the time for idle rag. We have to go." she said.

"Why?" he asked.

"I'll tell you later!" She shouted, dragging him by the arm.

Quincy didn't care and still thought of her name as "Pinky". The two made it past the invisible wall and marched past some predatory metalloids. Pinky's graceful spinning counters and elegant fighting moves impressed Quincy a decent amount. He wanted to ask how she perfected the practice of going toe-to-toe with those fierce animals so well. He didn't give himself that opportunity, though. All he was concerned about was his next opponent. He DID catch a glimpse of a figure moving in the shadows. Quincy's mind was less focused on her trying to kill the local wildlife and more focused on the mysterious man.

"I think I found our target." Quincy stated.

"And how do you think you did so?" a mysterious voice said in his ear.

Quincy staggered so far back that the man caught him and dragged him upward to the ceiling. Pinky had none of this and retreated to a "solid dimension" of sorts. All so that when Quincy finally made it to the Inhabitable Shelter up there above the Metaverse, he was already shuddering upon feeling all the menacing weight being placed on him. Like the sins of someone particularly despicable were gravitating his body towards the ground. Perfect for Pinky to unleash her counter-attack.

"Do you know what you HAVEN'T done?" it said.

[May 9th: “That’s not my job."]

"It has finally led up to this point. I've been trapping you in here, this very shelter, for 7 whole years." it said.

"Seven?! Has it really been that long? What was I doing for seven whole years?" Quincy asked.

"You have been staring at a screen." it replied.

"That couldn't be me. I wonder who exactly--" Quincy wondered for a second.

Then Quincy looked around. Sure enough, he saw a room filled to the top with electronics. The room was so small, it could only fit one person. That person walked on newspapers and toyed around with wires of all kinds. In the center was a screen that worked with everything in the room, including the TV antenna, the game consoles, the computer and even the DVD player. Surrounded by so much stuff, Quincy wondered what else a man could ask for. Then he realized that none of the rooms he has explored are even real. He really has been pacing around this wire-filled room for a decade. It got worse after that. When Pinky teleported inside the Inhabitable Shelter, she just stood there. Not even moving a muscle. She crossed her arms after sliding into the room. Quincy just HAD to ask why she was not doing anything. "Yeah, I've fought a lot of troublemakers. They hurt innocent people, they terrorized whole communities, they even threatened me multiple times. Encore, however, has a point behind his statements. By showing you this entire room, he is proving to YOU, not anyone else but YOU, that you have a lot of work to do. If you can just clear your head of all of this technology surrounding you and appreciate what you get, then maybe you can actually eliminate Encore." "Encore's pretty tough though! I don't even have to attack him to know that none of my badges work against him!" Quincy responded. "Well, you have to work for what you want, and what you want now is the Priority Badge. That badge has the power to defeat Encore, but if you want to obtain the badge, you have to do a LOT of stuff because it's locked behind an impenetrable lock. Locks like those aren't the easiest to crack. But if you want to, you don't have to make it so difficult. All you have to do is follow a simple set of directions. Just turn the gears." Pinky explained. "Wouldn't that lead to more powerful--" Quincy tried to say. "I'll help you." Pinky said. Quincy was shoved in a tight position. Encore, being who he is, rigged Quincy's soul so that when Encore takes damage, Quincy receives it back double. Encore loves it when Quincy suffers because then it will remind Quincy that the Shelter is the only way to stay alive. Except it isn't. Unfortunately, Quincy, under many, many, MANY different names has been kept in this loop for 7 years total ever since the beginning of the whole journey in 2013. There was only a time loop. No improvement. Even resetting the universe didn't prevent Encore from growing into what he is now. He's a part of Arthur/Quincy himself, meaning that he has always existed, no matter what form he took. Without a second thought, Encore took in everything and formed his own labyrinth out of his very being. He stored the Priority Badge in a lock like Pinky said it was. It was easy to find, but not easy to open. All Quincy had to do was change the way he did things and escape the Inhabitable Shelter. That wasn't easy, however. Not as easy as Quincy thought it was. First, he had to shut off the machines running in it just to unlock the door, and that required defeating the monsters hidden within. Fluency, Sightwords, Phonics and Literacy. Those were the 4. The screen was the final test, Academic. To influence the future, the present had to be controlled.

The worst part was that Pinky couldn’t even SEE Quincy. They were separated by a wall connecting the Labyrinth from the Shelter.

\----------------------------------------

First, Quincy entered the bizarre world of the TV Antenna. Everything there was white noise, with the occasional platform blocks to keep his footing intact. His assignment was the easiest one out of the whole Inhabitable Shelter. All Quincy had to do was make it to the main platform in the center. However, since his Erase Badge is gone, he cannot Wind Boost his way there. The blue blocks could only get him but so far with each jump. He had to time them carefully lest he fall off and warp back to the start while taking some damage.

"Alright, this is Fluency's domain. How could such a task like this be so simple? Is he the most demanding thing in the world?"

He was. Upon jumping off the last platform onto the main platform, a clone of Arthur's base form showed up dressed in a black jacket, white shirt, and black shoes. He rode on the platform in a motorcycle entirely made of metal. "Aren't you gonna say hi to the one keeping you up all night?" he said. His accent was unrecognizable to say the least. "I am only looking for one thing this summer and that's an all-night long party! You are free to join me and ride into the sunset together!" His motorcycle is 100% metal, with the option to transform into a sheet of armor enveloping Fluency, and a laser cannon that pierces everything including the walls. "Like my setup?" Fluency asked. "I didn't think you'd be this irritating." Quincy said to himself. In any case, he equipped his Solution Badge and went at the guy. "Why are you rushing at me?" Fluency said before getting hit twice by Quincy's fists. Fluency kicked Quincy back an inch. Quincy rushed at a blocking Fluency and used an electrical attack to disorient the guy. "I'm gonna use my power to the full now!" Quincy quipped as he charged up his Solution Badge. Fluency transformed his Steel River into a sword to fight Quincy's own Solution Sword with. Clash after clash. A swing, a block, a stab, and a parry. The two kept swinging at each other with blades bigger than they are. Quincy eventually took a step back and waited for Fluency to transform Steel River into something else. However, Fluency had a plan of his own and attached the laser cannon part of Steel River into the motorcycle part. Surprised but not fettered, Quincy readied his sword, jumping high into the air. He landed behind Fluency instead of his intended target, or so Fluency thought. The platform, though it had a guard rail, was not high enough for vehicles. The motorcycle tipped over, and Fluency fell to what is his death. Quincy got the job done by cutting Steel River in half, killing Fluency for good.

"Well that's that. Stupid is what stupid does."

As soon as he said that, he was booted out of the TV Antenna back into the newspapers. The Antenna blew up, dispelling a fourth of the TV static covering up the final test. The wires surrounding the rest of the electronics also vanished. "Next up: Phonics!" Quincy said to himself.

[May 10th: Phonics: Delivery Estimate]

A DVD Menu? Just a plain ol' DVD Menu, a blue cube with a disc in the background?!

"You know what? I would rather stay here. I prefer to get comfortable and care about nobody but myself while I am cooped up in a world of entertainment. Because that is what babies do. Babies have everything to themselves; they care about nobody. And yet, when they treat everyone else around them like dirt, they do not get much else from their caretakers. No, I am not referring to those under 4 years of age. I'm referring to selfish people like YOU, Mr.--"

Phonics, meanwhile, was destroying Quincy with every little course of movement. Black energy pillar of death. Sixteen arrows of darkness. A whole army of dark knights. An energy circle from where the darkest of monsters appear. Through and through, Phonics had the bases covered. Quincy exited the field and wondered what to do next. "Everyone keeps yelling at me to get up and do something…" he thought to himself. The Inhabitable Shelter was swirling around his field of vision. It got dizzying enough that Quincy tried to grab something to reorient himself with. Just when he grabbed the platform, his entire body froze. "What's going on? Why can't I move?!" Quincy thought. He tried calling out for help, but yes, his mouth also numbed up. Quincy was helpless. No way to beat Phonics with his badge set, no way to even move because of a curse that Phonics put on him. "…ou see….urt!" a voice called out from behind the glass. Quincy could barely hear it, for his ears have not numbed up yet. He mustered up all the strength he could to stumble over to where the voice was, for he could even see like an ordinary person. "…ow! Wha....ppened to you...ody?" the voice called out again. It was a stifled voice, but the closer Quincy got, the more he could make out the words. "I....I've been cursed...?" Quincy slurred. His mouth was numbed shut, but he could still speak to an extent. "Evidently. What you need is a badge for relief! Look over there, I gave you something." the voice said. Quincy could see the figure. He looked fairy-ish, with a chipmunk-like voice and everything. The yellow garment looked the part, too. Quincy felt a powerful influence coming from him, and it radiated from the Brightness Badge over behind him too. Quincy tried to move his arm, along with his leg. "One, two, one, two, one, two..." Quincy repeated to himself as he marched toward the badge. His curse was almost cleared! Quincy picked the badge up. He had already seen a stylized X and a neon-colored leaf. But that was nothing compared to this. It was a sun overlapping a lunar eclipse! With a name like the "Brightness Badge", Quincy knew that this badge had some amazing capabilities. Once Quincy gripped the badge in his paw, a mysterious energy flew out of him. He had almost lost his life force, but once he equipped the badge, he was normal again. Like he had just taken a jog outside and felt relieved.

"Well, I better get going. What'd you tell me your name was?"

"I'm Sheridan, and I'm trapped behind a glass wall with no way to get out. If you defeat all 5 of the villains, then you can free me. If you die out there, don't expect me to rescue you."

Quincy went back inside the DVD player and confronted Phonics. He began his rampage again; Quincy noticed that a piece of a dead Fluency is inside of him. Anyhow, Quincy charged up his Brightness Badge and released a laser of sunlight (Solar Laser)! Phonics felt that through his dark armor. "Where'd you get that? Did that fairy give you a piece of his power?" Phonics shouted. "My secret." Quincy responded. Quincy went ahead to use these moves, in order: A few swings of a sword made of sunlight (SunKnight), a barrage of sunlight beams (Sunstorm), a rush of leaves with cutting power (Windy Whisper) and the cherry on top, the special. "Nothing up my sleeve!" Quincy said as he vanished. Then before anyone knew it, Phonics had fallen apart, bled profusely, and vanished. Quincy had used a special technique called the Fast Lane. You travel swift and yellow dots appear behind you. Then you attack so fast that nobody can even see how fast you are moving. Like a blur. Those yellow dots track your movement, so you can teleport to any one of those dots if you are done blitzing around.

"One down, three to go!"

Next up: The Video Game Machine, with a guest appearance from Sightwords!

[May 11-12: Visitation from a Mystery]

The battle with Sightwords was not much. The guy spent a lot of his time talking Arthur down, while Arthur dismantled him and his tank bit by bit with his Fast Lane technique. Sightwords, who resembles Fluency like Phonics did, did not really do much in terms of fighting. He was fought in a pink environment with lots of trees and hills, also pink. It is a past location.

When Arthur came back, he asked Sheridan “Did I rush through my work? Sightwords felt effortless.”

"Not at all, really. In fact, there wasn't really much to go over."

"Just another talkative loon, huh?"

"Encore has plenty of them. Anyways, your friends are in deep trouble."

"How deep?"

Pinky and her friends were fighting Encore's minions in the final room of the labyrinth, in view of the entity himself. None of them could damage the minions straight up. Reverse Dog is a canine in a green space suit with helmet. His attacks include ray guns, energy beams and a jetpack on his back for more range of movement. Delta comes back with a fresh look (but still a fox). She wears 4 Delta Rings, two on each finger, and her cards, all 3,000+ of them come back in full force. All of this from three different allies and none of them can fight Encore's army. They are forced to run away and wait for Arthur to save them. That he was able to when Sheridan pointed at Arthur's Brightness Badge. That is when it started glowing. With a bright and intense light, Arthur started charging up a type of energy known as Prayer Force. It surrounded his hands, turning them golden. Although he could only use this immense power for 15 minutes, it was the only thing that could stop Encore and his minions. They are weak to the power of the Gate of Prayer. Arthur tested this out by leaping on the computer tower and conducting Prayer Force through it, destroying it from the inside. Its master, Literacy, was found dead inside the wires having been blown up from the inside. He looked identical to Fluency and Sightwords.

"Harsh fate there, buddy." Quincy said after hearng that story.

"I'll charge up your Prayer Force for you on the way to the final test. Now that you are ready, I'll lead the way to the arena, where several of Encore's minions await you. It's rather ominous and edgy down there, though."

"Who said I wasn't ready to take on an entire army?"

"That's the enthusiasm I expect from a hero."

The final test? More like a final arena. This open-wide area was so dark only a small fraction of vision was allowed. Darkness thrived in this place. A mysterious flag-like symbol in the center could be seen. It was red, white, and gray. Quincy waited for his combatants patiently. Not a sound could be heard for at least 5 minutes.

\-------------------------------------------------

[May 13th: Fool for You]

There was a voice. “Hey! I know you are irritated right now because nobody is paying any attention to you. Right now, your source of power is heavily guarded in a different environment. I decided to strap him in to prevent you from doing anything else but facing the devil.” It was a clone of Arthur that looked drastically variant from the one and only. His mantle was in tatters, he hovered in the air like a superhero and he spoke with a mocking tone of vocalization. His face was also concealed by the void. "You can't hide crucial information from someone that can read minds, you know. I already know that you're only satisfied by what comes to you and to you only. You're happy because you know that you're about to receive two things, two items of steep value, right when you want them. This isn't too hard to figure out. You don't have to treat everyone like garbage to cement your pride. In all honesty, you CAN change..."

"But I see no reason for you to." Exciter said.

Quincy took in those words and nearly collapsed as a result. Exciter summoned 4 crystals, all of them green because it's one of Quincy's favorite colors. He took the chance to use those jewels to slam Quincy up against the wall, cracking his Brightness Badge. Quincy couldn't muster the strength to call upon the Prayer Force. Thus, Exciter shot all manner of firepower at Quincy, which taxed his chances to get back up and take down Exciter. Exciter was seemingly a terrorizingly eldritch member of Encore's military, and he does NOT take prisoners. In fact, once he acknowledges he is close to erasing somebody, he will take all opportunity to murder them without delay. He is not somebody to be messed with. Quincy didn't feel all that great either because what Exciter said about him was all true. He WAS a painfully selfish creature. His pride exceeds his own body weight, and he has a genuine problem with it. In fact...

"So are you done trying to use others for your own benefit?" Exciter said to Quincy.

"Been that way a long ti--" Quincy replied.

"I'm not talking to you. In fact, I wasn't even aiming for you or referring to you."

"Wait, what?"

Yes, Exciter was talking to another fragment of Quincy: his viewpoint! The one watching all the things going on right now and feeling all the better for it, because he's not currently going through these events as they occur! "Why would you need MY attention?" the viewpoint said. It's a part of Encore's influence that found its way into Quincy's system. "Leave the guy alone. He's had way too much to deal with because of your actions. If you are tampering with his heart, I will find a way to cut you out of the deal." Exciter said. "Wait, you're a good person?" Quincy asked. "Good person? Quincy, I'm your sense of justice. My name is Exciter, and the final test was merely a secret test of character. You passed it successfully, but now that I know that Encore is influencing your actions, we will need to take action." Exciter explained. "How long have you been trying to help me out?" Quincy asked. "Since 2013. I had a different name back then. Sheridan's my helpful partner. We coordinated this test together, and he trusted me enough to willingly get trapped in my Nullifier. This is exactly how much we wanted to test you to see if you really were like that Encore guy. We're not out to harm you in the slightest." Encore said. "Oh. Well then why were you labeled an enemy?" Quincy asked. "Encore hates my guts substantially. That screen was the only way to prevent my full power from being realized. With that..." Exciter explained.

He then used a metal chain-like whip to exorcise Encore's influence from Quincy's system. While Quincy regenerated from the severe strain put on him (that influence connected itself to his soul, you know) Exciter fought the new enemy, Expander over the course of 5 minutes. All Quincy could see was crystals flying here and there, blasts of energy thrown at the two combatants, and a heated battle between two heavy waves of force that eventually led to Expander being blown up from the inside. This allowed Quincy to fully regenerate his life force and freed Sheridan from the Nullifier.

"Now, where's the exit?"

Exciter punches a hole in the wall hard enough to break the TV screen, putting an end to the Inhabitable Shelter for good. The three themselves in the final leg of the assignment: The Weavy Warren.

[May 14-15: Encore, Where Light Shall Not Shine]

The Warren was separated into 5 distinct rooms, all marked by Greek letters. Each room required 3 things. Defeat the enemies, solve the puzzle, then open the door and walk the pathway to the next room. This is topped off by a unique Egyptian atmosphere. The rooms are as follows:

Alpha Ravine

Exciter shows off his skills here as the crystals disorient the foes with lasers that bounce off the gems and surfaces. Exciter's melee combat isn't bad, either. Sheridan's sunlight works well here for solving the puzzle: reflect light from the window into the solar panel to open the door, which is powered by solar energy. Sheridan had to wait till the other guys were done with the enemies, then just point his finger at the door's solar panel, which is high up in a location that would have been a bit difficult to reflect light onto with the mirror on the table. The trio walk down the corridors to enter...

Beta Caldera

The puzzle here is much easier than Alpha's: Defeat the enemies, then toss one of their dead bodies into the actual crack in the ground on the right side of the room. The crack was big enough to fit an adult man, so it was certainly big enough to fit these inhuman-looking dog things in there, too. This time, Quincy handled the preparation - and with such deft, too! He pulled out his Solution Sword, infused it with a bit of Prayer Force, and slashed one time. He never moved from his initial position at all. His strike launched the Encore Dogs all the way to the right side of the room, dumping them in the crack! The door opened upon being presented this sacrifice (why would Encore sacrifice his own dudes?) and the following pathways led our protagonists to....

Gamma Fault

The puzzle here was much harder than the other two. This time, the heroes simply had to survive for 3 minutes against three Encore Knights. Keep in mind that none of the ideals could injure the Knights. At all. One touch, and the timer had to be reset. Naturally, there was a ton of dodging. However, Sheridan AND Quincy had an idea. Quincy summoned Crosswave Platinum - which wasn't lost when Exciter exorcised Encore's influence from him - and used it to carry the three into the ceiling, keeping them there for all 3 minutes. "Who said abusing loopholes couldn't be fun?" Quincy remarked. The door opened, and Crosswave let go of the three as they ran in the door quick as they could. The next room, which wasn't too far off, carried the name....

Lambda Crevasse

This is what the final test should have been to Quincy. Thirty Dogs, Three Knights and one Goliath. A full gauntlet against Encore's worst. Sheridan handled the Knights, Exciter handled the Goliath, and Quincy was left to use his Prayer Force-infused Solution Sword to destroy the Dogs, and that he did. One strike after another, Quincy slew half the army in only a few seconds. This royally impressed Pinky and her friends, who were hiding out in the corner of the pitch-black arena. Sheridan mostly put up a shield and countered the Knights' attacks. He knew that the Knights wouldn't take a whole bunch of damage from Sheridan's attacks, so he opted to redirect the damage from theirs right back at them! It was a great strategy, as the Knights didn't know what to do. They had to either attack Sheridan and risk getting hurt, or not attack him at all. Sheridan just simply impaled all three with energy spears. It worked good enough for him anyway. Exciter's fight with the Goliath is the story of legends. The two were going at it harder than Jack's struggle with the Beanstalk Giants, and after their respective fights Quincy and Sheridan watched him square up against the titan. Exciter's crystals couldn't do much to harm Goliath, so Exciter went for the quaint method and soared in the air. The two others could feel the vibrations from their impacts through the ground, and it proved to be a spectacular experience. Quincy compared it to watching an action movie in a theater and feeling the sound effects through the advanced sound systems embedded in the walls! It was genuinely moving, seeing a justice-fueled warrior casually shrugging hits from a monster that looked like it could take on the King of the Monsters himself in a one-on-one! Yes, Goliath was really that big! But nothing impressive lasts forever, and so Goliath came to a swift yet satisfying end by Exciter, who looks incredibly battered up from his tussle. "Don't ask. We'll pick up the pieces when we get to Encore." he said. The final corridor was lengthy and winding. Yet, once the absolute darkness (or eigengrau) kept getting closer, they knew exactly how close to Encore they were getting. It only took several steps to get there, but then Pinky and her friends caught up.

"How rude of you to just leave us behind after we were so severely beaten by that man Encore!" Pinky cried out.

"Oh, my bad. What's your name?" Exciter inquired.

"Most people call me Pinky. I don't mind a thing." she explained.

"Good thing, too. Variance doesn't roll off the tongue as easily. You should have seen her face when we called her Pinky because of her color!" Reverse Dog joked.

“That's racial profiling and you know it." Pinky said, not amused.

"I was unfortunate enough to make that mistake. Not to her face, though." Quincy said.

"We're here for the same reason you are: to cleanse our world of that man called Encore. We could really--" Delta said.

"No problem. Any situation like this can be handled by the five of us together!" Quincy exclaimed.

"Encore's just ahead of us!" Reverse Dog pointed out.

The five heroes look ahead to the final hallway, which is so pitch black not even Sheridan's natural sunlight can pierce it. The group maneuver through it as if Sheridan wasn't there at all. The feeling that darkness was crawling up on them got ever stronger as they marched to the final room. Encore was just ahead. All 5 of them endured 7 years of his constant influence. Now it was time to put an end to it for the last time.

Meanwhile Quincy took on his Arthur form the closer he got to the final point...

\--------------------------------------------------

The final room was some crossroads. Interconnected to each other intertwined by buildings and bordered by trees. There were traffic lights and parked cars, typical street fare. At the center of it all was the man himself, Encore. As soon as the five found him through the buildings, they all tried to rush after him. However, Encore knew he wasn't susceptible to Prayer Force at all, so he willingly waited until the heroes got to him in the center of it all. Then as they all drew their weaponry...

"Back up! He's about to do something!" Pinky warned.

"Indeed, you won't be able to damage me normally. So, I'll make sure you won't." Encore stated.

He put his hands up, organized 6 gears around him, then projected a negatively colored field. Then, time stopped in place. Everyone froze in place. All the clocks on the buildings, be it the church down the street, or the watch shop in the corner of the crossroad, they all froze in place. Everything was gray-colored. Everything. Except Arthur, who also had something like that. He isn't sure how he is able to move around in frozen time, but when he got that impression, he took advantage of it to send Encore flying when he tried to kill Pinky. That's when Encore got out a sword of his own and clashed with Arthur. Then he used a technique called the Flicker Second, which is where Encore skips time forward by a second to swiftly move across the battlefield in record time. Arthur didn't see it coming and flew down the street once Encore kicked him in the back. Arthur grabbed a traffic pole and swung on it to regain his composure. Then, he tried a similar trick to evade a charging Encore. "You dare use my own techniques against me, Arthur?" he asked in a menacing tone of voice. "What? I can't hear you!" Arthur responded on top of a building. "If you take a step, you're gonna get ripped apart by the strands of time! I have set a trap for you!" Arthur called out. Encore didn't know what he meant by that, but just in case he WAS being set up, Encore laid a web of his own energy all around the battlefield. "That's not gonna have an effect on the web I have set up myself, Encore." Arthur thought to himself. "In that second that I teleported; I laid a 45-feet web of Prayer Force bolts all around your battlefield. I managed to calculate how large it was based on the diameter of the trees bordering it. There's nothing past those trees, and it's a 45-foot walk from the bike store in the east to next to the convenience store in the west. Since your arena was that large, I knew exactly where to place my webs. I did it so fast you didn't even notice my trap!" Encore rushed after Arthur, and the latter activated his Prayer Force trap. However, Encore's force traps activated then, too. They were dissolved by the Prayer Force webs, but not before the webs' force beams were blocked by Encore's webs. To counter this, Arthur engaged in a sword fight in the air between him and Encore that was mostly a contest of who had the best Flicker Second. Their flow of movement gave Arthur the will to lay more Prayer Force traps around the areas they fought in. His plan was to blow them all up just before time unfroze, which would trap Encore in his own dimension of frozen time and blow him up. Arthur DID hear from Encore that he was immune to Prayer Force, but no such minion of his was immune to it, so why should he? It's an indicator that Encore, who is Arthur's heart by itself, refuses to change. Encore is so steeped in his willingness to only obey what he says is practically rooted in his very being. He's no safe one to stand by. The two kept swinging at each other, using every ounce of their fiber to counter and parry the other's blows. Crosswave Platinum then appeared to Encore, forcing the latter to Flicker Second away from him AND his attacks. The movement of time, no matter how brief, decreased the time left for the Force bombs to detonate. Encore didn't realize this and searched for every means necessary to avoid Crosswave Omega. "Your Soul Guardian... it repulses me! Go look for some other means necessary to--" Encore said. "I have already sealed you inside your own pool of selfishness. Your 1-day timer for our battle will now be severely shortened as I pull back the curtain on what I have done throughout the 27 times we've rushed through the City of You. Once you have seen the results on focusing too much on yourself, you will bow down to the power of compassion, forgiveness, patience, self-control, and perseverance. You won't be able to escape this." Arthur said aloud. He had Crosswave Omega close the boundaries of time on Encore. Encore's own fields of darkness began crawling up on him as the corrupted side of Arthur's heart began to thrash around and clutch his head on pain. Defeated, shattered, broken. Encore goes down like a baby throwing a tantrum as his own world collapses on him. It's a representative of pride before a fall. Arthur knew his own heart would shatter to pieces, but he didn't feel bad about it. He was going to mature into a truly amiable piece of work.

Back in Exhibit MASTER, the explosion covering up the City of Encore was large enough to be seen from the perspective of the Tower of Initiative. Arthur had already exonerated the warriors preserved in the passage of the universe out of the fulminating location.

Encore's actions flashed across his city's demise as he reviewed his past actions. He manipulated a person only known as "The Denizen" to Encore because he viewed her as nothing more than a conduit to buy all the things he could ask for. A mother figure turned into someone's pawn! How despicable could that be? Jealousy makes up half of Encore's system and it showed through his lack of appreciation for Soul Canvasses that weren’t his, but that did not matter since Encore was outdated. The city blew up, and Arthur, who was morphing back to his Quincy form, felt an undying illness in the center of his body. Once he landed in Exhibit MASTER, the rest of the warriors came to check on him. He turned around and revealed a pink energy flowing out of him. He was not used to this yet, so it was steadily killing him.

There was a cure, though.

[May 15: Pink Sun and the Reality Warper]

Arthur took a journey to Solution City as Quincy. As soon as he let everyone else know where he was going to receive his treatment, he left for the other world. Instead of marching to the plaza, he took a left and was introduced to an innovative environment. It had looked like the sky itself could be walked on. However, in the center of the new area was a polyhedron with a thousand sides. A pink chiliagon (thousand-sided polygon) bordered by what appeared to be metal strands in the middle of nowhere. For some reason, it had an influential effect on Quincy. He couldn't move at all. The pink force flowing from it left him so in awe that he couldn't budge a muscle at all. It started to affect Crosswave Omega, who sailed off, outside of Quincy's expanse. However, Omega did not fade from Quincy's sight. The waves of energy that the Pink Sun gave off were immense, yet they gave Quincy a light and airy feeling. "That couldn't be the radiance driving itself deep into my soul, could it?" he thought. The Pink Sun wanted something from Quincy, however. It wasn't doing him any harm. It was an offering. Pink Sun wanted someone eliminated. Someone it claimed could mold reality without even lifting a finger. This person was highly dangerous and closely resembled Quincy. When the Pink Sun was done appearing to Quincy for the first time that night, it departed and left Quincy staring at a nighttime highway. None of the cars were hitting him at all. It was like a blur to him. Then, a voice rang out from behind him. "I see you found the Pink Sun. Are you ready to uphold this responsibility?"

Fluorescence.

"As you can now see, your Guardian has left you precisely because it is not yours. It is the Guardian of a truly selfish and careless heart motivated by jealousy of others. Yours is nowhere to be found as of now because you haven't grown yours. I want you to behold the grace and symphony of a reality warper like me."

Fluorescence rips off her (yes, HER) face unveiling a completely altered appearance underneath it. She then charges towards Quincy and teleports them both to a different location before Quincy can even react. Crosswave Omega, now rebranded as Jealousy Central, doesn't move from its initial position as indirect hit after indirect hit is landed on Quincy. Quincy couldn't even get next to Fluorescence because Central kept him away. Central was immune to about every form of damage imaginable. This metallic fiend was unstoppable from a one-sided point of view. An endless ocean. The limitless boundaries of space. The milky white caverns of the Moon. Shining reflections of a 5-carat world. Indefinite ends of an open sky. Teleporting with every hit caused the strands of reality to bend and twists, eventually unfurling the true form of the battle arena: a psychedelic array of moving effects. Blobs of trippiness moved about in the background, and it could make a man dizzy in mere seconds. Guardian-less and hopeless, Quincy just had to form a plan that could turn this battle on its side.

[May 16-17: Reality Shaper Fluorescence]

"I have already made my decision. I have a distinct Guardian. It can teleport anything thrown at it or me into another dimension. Considering you have hundreds of these at your disposal, I guess it would not hurt if you launched an attack on me. Hit me with your worst." Quincy goaded Fluorescence. Feeling taunted, Fluorescence had Jealousy Central launch 100 arrows from the Guardian's Wicked Quiver at Quincy. In response, Quincy brought out his new Soul Guardian, Tolerance. Four double helixes arranged in a human-like shape. It's a Guardian unlike any other that Quincy has seen before! Tolerance saw the arrow attack and had just the right response for it. Without saying a word, Tolerance projected a purplish-black field. The arrows froze in their position and got sucked into the parallel dimension, one by one. However, Tolerance's grip was losing its foothold. "Ah, don't worry, I got this under wraps." Quincy thought to himself as he resorted to breaking open reality itself to prevent the arrows from getting any closer. The arrows were very painful to get hit by, considering they're made of the same force that gave Encore his shape and power. They were going to drag Quincy down and he was NOT having it at all. Quincy continued to leap and bash his opponent, striking her with the power of his badges until it was done. Notably, despite his new Encore Badge being equipped, he never used it once. He had plans for that one, but he's not going to reveal them just yet. He's waiting for Fluorescence to make her next move.

"17 more universes to go!" she said as she spun Jealousy Central around and piled up a psychedelic mix together out of her current set. All Quincy had in his mind was anticipation. He knew that she wasn't controlling her dimension(s), but HIS.

It all came to a head when Fluorescence piled 6 dimensions at once into each other. "Haven't you realized that your Guardian never hit me once? I'm standing here seeing this psychedelic backdrop you're creating, and you have successfully failed to realize that I've dragged you into my dimension of storage! Now, aren't you going to sit back and watch as Tolerance nullifies anything you did so far? Up to this point you've been wasting your time with those arrows. They're all gone thanks to Tolerance. See you in a bit." Quincy's harsh words echoed back to Fluorescence as she and her Guardian attempted to undo the reality-warping effects. They strived to keep their balance, but ultimately, their power got out of hand as they tumbled into Tolerance's storage unit and collapsed due to Quincy tossing his Encore Badge in there beforehand. Tolerance closed the barrier and let Quincy out of the area quite silently. "Quite a show, wasn't it?" Quincy remarked. He could still see Solution City when he turned around. Was he in the plaza the whole time overviewing these weird events? What was this Pink Sun, and why did Quincy feel its presence everywhere he went? Quincy feels the need to jump into the Metaverse to figure things out, so he warps there. Again, nobody in the plaza can detect a thing.

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[May 18: World of Feeling]

The Metaverse by then only consisted of a single room with a door in the wall. That room then darkened to reveal a night sky. "I JUST got here, and now it starts acting up? Where's Exhibit MASTER?" Arthur cried out. "Why do I look human now? I only displayed that trait when I fought Alpha and returned from Encore! ...I feel like I only use whatever form applies to the current situation." he thought. "Right you are. When the scene changes, you change. It doesn't work like that in Solution City because it's hardcoded that you're an animal over there." The Pink Sun called out. "You can read minds, too?" Arthur said. He appeared as that animal-human hybrid from his encounter with Impulse. "Look around you. What do you see?" Pink Sun asked. "I see a night sky with dozens of pink stars in space. What does it mean?" Arthur responded. "This is just a few of the massive amounts of influence we possess in the world. Those pink stars in the background are clusters of Endear Force. Just like how stars form out of rock and gas, we have our own star system. I am in the center of it, and thus I control the Endear Force used by those on both sides of reality. Your power goes into flux a lot. To use it effectively, you must balance that power. Even though Endear Energy is enormously powerful, its combat usages are non-existent. It's more of a healing device than anything because it's driven by feeling, rather than motion. You must feel it as well to make it work right. All this time you have been holding back on that power. All that time you've been attempting to harness it has been blocked by your attitude towards things like this." Pink Sun explained. "Things like what?" Arthur asked. Before he knew it, he was holding a rabbit in his arms. "Huh. You KNOW what my favorite animal is. Is that linked to my transformations?" Arthur asked. "Quite possibly. Go and get a checkup in Exhibit MASTER before you come back to me telling me how much you've improved. Those rings you're going to see later will test your strength well. Remember. The keyword is balance. You have to balance it!" Pink Sun said before warping Arthur to Exhibit MASTER, which is now freely explorable after so long! Arthur took his chance to find out what lies beyond the walls of the first stages of Exhibit MASTER. The Gears followed him; they made the brand-new world appear before Arthur's eyes...

It vaguely resembles a city. "Those pink particles that the Pink Sun showed me are becoming clearer to me now. I can see them!" Arthur exclaimed as he reached out to touch one. The balance wasn't corrected within Arthur's system yet, so when he touched it all the force within that one star overloaded Arthur's soul and launched him back a dozen feet. "That didn't just happen right now. I should have harnessed it for myself!" Arthur exclaimed when he ended up in Starlight's dimension. Starlight is the definitive version of Tolerance that came with a few new abilities! "What did you see, Starlight?" Arthur asked curiously. With a metallic voice, Starlight replied with, "Arthur, I saw double a dozen images of small animals. The images were bordered by pink, ornate frames."

"You didn't see a star, but rather images? What makes you so different?" Arthur replied.

"I can see behind the stars. Those images are the forces behind the feelings. You are repressing those feelings because you feel that it would take a bite out of your maturity. I know this because I'm a part of the soul. What's behind those stars is driving you crazy. That's why you flew back; your body and mind couldn't take all of it at once. To develop your skills further, you will need to stop holding back on receiving power. Put yourself in a relaxed state in the next world." Starlight said as it pushed Arthur back into Exhibit MASTER.

"Don't look at me, look at the arrow I'm holding. It's molded out of Endear Force. If you can relax your mind and catch the arrow without difficulty, then you can efficiently master your usage of it." Starlight said.

The Soul Guardian threw the arrow at Arthur once. He dodged it, forcing Starlight to teleport the arrow back to him. He threw it again. Arthur caught it and flew back a few feet. "It's not working!" Arthur complained. "Are you relaxing your mind?" Starlight asked. Arthur wouldn't do that, for it meant taking the brunt of all those images at once. He wasn't prepared for that event. All he could think about is exploring more of Exhibit MASTER. Too bad for him; Endear Force was the main attraction.

"Alright, get hit by this one and I won't save you from flying this time." Starlight warned. He slung the arrow, it flew. Arthur caught it, relaxed his mind, and stopped.

"What's going on?" Arthur asked. He had caught the arrow flawlessly, but now his body had pink stripes running down to his feet. "Starlight, this isn't what I intended to go through..." he said. His mind cycled through the 28 different images that Starlight talked about. "These are the forces that run Exhibit MASTER. You can see them, can't you? How do you feel? If you feel like you're about to rail, it's about time you studied up on this a little more. The force is supposed to heal, not harm. If it's harming you, then you're a little special." Pink Sun's words echoed to Arthur as he saw the world change color repeatedly. "Don't let go of the arrow!" Starlight called out.

It would only be a matter of time before Arthur made it to the next world.

\-----------------------------------------------------------

[May 19-20: Cuteness Requiem Part 1]

"I think I have found my placement."

"Feel around for the environment. Know your powers and deck so. Adjust based on your foe's frequency. Then you will find your true power. Endear Force is not to be trifled with. When you gripped the arrow in your hands, you agreed to take on this floaty challenge. One where your gut tells you where to go and what to do. Today, you will finally harness this energy."

Radiant light pierces the darkness and reveals the Reverse World! The same as Exhibit CITY, but with a darker pink color than usual. Arthur's transformation became more plain as he fully assumed his animal figure from Solution City. "What? This time it's permanent!" Arthur exclaimed. "Indeed. We have held back on saying this for the longest time, but this decade-spanning force that we control is motivated by cuteness. If you had fur, then this entire process would be much easier for you. It is more of a reward than anything. Look! Whatever is left of your human form is peeling away! Now learn this power with us." Pink Sun echoed.

Arthur now forever takes the reigns of Quincy. The arrow he gripped has turned into a deck of 49 cards. "Follow the instructions I will give you." Pink Sun echoed. Quincy shuffles the cards, looks at the images on them for 5 seconds, then reshuffles the deck as he deals each card. The cards float in the air, displaying different animals with distinct colors. The animals are anthropomorphic, and they all pose differently. They appear to be drawn. "Each of these cards will grant you one of their powers. Use them very wisely on your next test." Pink Sun echoes. Quincy collects his deck and reshuffles them once more. He then riffles his cards, does a reverse shuffle, tries a corgi shuffle before resetting back to a reverse shuffle, and then throws the cards out in the distance. Randomized and distinct, each 20 of those cards give out a foreign light that Starlight can see from Exhibit CITY. Purple, green, white, and orange. They all flash that certain color before reversing themselves. "These are alternate versions of your cards that carry a more potent influence on the dealer. Reversing an Endear Card carries all sorts of side effects, from the good to the bad." Pink Sun echoed. "What am I fighting now?" Quincy asked. "Nobody. You will be thrown in the Fleeting Desire chamber. That is where you will master your power and become another individual. Someone better and more competent." Pink Sun echoed. "Remember, your inner self will tell you what's natural and what's not. You will wake up refreshed and moving about as a new person. Enter the next world!"

Quincy's journey was a spectacular one. Stars filled the area and gave Quincy a sense of floatiness. His desires came to life before him manifesting as silhouettes, each color standing for a certain thing hidden beneath the heart. "It's the Reverse Frequency. If I can match this with whatever this "Cuteness" witchcraft is, then I'll get a head start. It's 4 on 1 today." Quincy thought.

Then he was slipped a mysterious ring. "Starlight, you sneaky devil..." Quincy said to himself as he pumped his fist. The shockwave that appears destroys the silhouettes and gives him an almighty burst of power. It was something that he's never quite felt before. Pink stripes lined down his body, and he was granted a new badge (The Endear Badge). It was a miracle, too. By the time he completed his test and warped back down to Exhibit CITY, he was already capable of more things than his old self was. For starters, the Remnants in front of him on the street didn't see his Reverb Lightning coming. Pink lightning bolts sprung from his fingers as he concentrated on his Endear Force abilities and fired the current. The Remnants couldn't process the sheer power of it all and vanished in puffs of dust. "So, this is the way this works. I wonder why this power is so legendary..." he said to himself. He had stared at his hands for a solid 30 seconds wondering why he could do that. Then he pulled his tunic back and saw three badges equipped on his body. Horizons Badge, Solution Badge, and the Endear Badge. The three together, when mastered, could conquer about anything. Except while Quincy mastered the first two, the Endear Badge had some hidden potential. He couldn't just control lightning. He could use plenty of elemental forces, like ice and fire. It just came down to WHEN he could use them. He certainly had the mental capacity to fire off a few things, but when he looked to his right and saw the gallery of card decks he could potentially get, he knew he was lacking a thing or two. This isn't even counting the Endear Ring he was slipped, which is how he fired that lightning so flawlessly.

"Starlight, it's about time we decided to upgrade ourselves further."

[May 21-22: Cuteness Requiem Part 2]

Quincy took a minute to examine the several types of cards lying on the desks here and there. They all featured different images on the front, some on the back as Reversed Cards. "Starlight, have you seen these before?" Quincy asked. "Not at all. I'd recommend avoiding the ones with red borders. Those contain Reverse Frequency power that tends to have a strong influence on the particularly weak-willed." Starlight reports. "Which ones can I pick up, then?" Quincy asked. "Grey or blue borders. Nothing more than that. Reverse Frequency can come when you least expect it." Starlight answered. Just then, that green fox from earlier, Delta, descends from the air in front of the card registry. "We've been looking for you for 20 solid minutes! When we got wind that a new place in the Metaverse was created, Pinky led us to your location!" Delta called out. Quincy had already hidden behind one of the walls, the cards that he registered floating in the air. They looked like they were about to fly into Delta's body and cut her up. Delta didn't move a muscle. She and the rest of her group waited outside for him to show himself. Quincy slightly moved from the corner and asked, "Who could you possibly be?"

"We're your friends from months past. I'm Delta, the one that used to control Delta Force," she answered. "Behind me is Pinky, who is Conduit in a different form. She assumed a new identity after getting warped on her way to the new world. Next to me are two new ones, Reverse Dog and Exciter. Reverse Dog is a refugee from an entire universe that collapsed on itself and restarted anew. As such, it took him a while to get here. He's an entirely new person! Exciter, as you may know, is your sense of justice given form. I think he knows you the most out of all of us."

Quincy stepped out from behind the wall. "Ah, so these are the guys I've been looking for all along! I wonder why it took me so long to find you here..." Quincy said. "This is my Soul Guardian, Starlight. Do you guys have one?" The four all shake their heads. They don't have a clue as to why Quincy has one but not them. "Maybe you'll get one along the way," he said.

He had Starlight retrieve the cards without the red borders on them, which totaled over 400. Starlight automatically sorted them by appearance and hid them all in his parallel dimension. He did all of this without moving a muscle, as moving around while the four had his eyes fixed on him would make him look suspicious.

"What's our next goal?" Delta asked. "I'm not sure yet. Exhibit CITY is quite massive. I want to explore this area and get a good feel of it before I do anything else unnatural." Quincy answered.

This still doesn't answer the question of what would happen if all of Quincy's belongings were infused with Endear Force, primarily his Soul Guardian, which still has untapped potential.

\------------------------------------------------------------

After some walking, Quincy and his group discover a location that he didn't see when he first arrived at Exhibit CITY. A tall, mountain-shaped facility that only Quincy could see. "Am I the only one seeing this?" Quincy asked. "Appears so. I don't see anything but a bunch of skyscrapers." Delta responded. Quincy walked inside the doors, and promptly, the entire outside area vanished in a pinch. "You're the lucky one. The one chosen to walk through the Neo Reactor. Forget about the red cards on the wall. They won't bite unless you look at them funny. Why aren't your eyes on what's in front of you instead of all those naughty bits?" Quincy then got startled a bit by the mysterious voice. He didn't know she was tracking his vision and every step. Her voice even started to sound familiar. "Are you somebody that I might know?" Quincy asked. "Maybe I am, maybe I'm not. You will have to find out yourself," she answered. Quincy did not get to see much of the Neo Reactor before a pink arrow-like bolt flew at him and punctured him in the abdomen. "I'm going to test you. Behold, a new location crafted from your inner soul!" she announced.

Heaven's Route.

A sea of clouds surrounded by all things pink. Some of Quincy's cards were floating in the background, which started to disorient the guy a bit. "I'm not quite used to this level of cuteness yet. Is my mental energy not enough to process it in full? It's related to Starlight. He should know a thing or two about this place." Quincy thought. He summoned Starlight. "I've detected over a dozen signs of life in this area. ...Mostly pink foxes." he stated. "Say that again?" Quincy quipped. "Also, this area is compatible with Reverb Adjustments. They influence Soul Guardians by upgrading them to their highest potential. It appears that I can undergo one of these adjustments. Doing so, however, would tax your mental strength. So, in preparation for this, I will allow you to skip the course and allow you to meet the master of this location--" "That ain't happening." Quincy said as he went up and rushed after the first group of pink foxes. They were small, yet powerful. Music might have influenced them. Either way, they weren't going to let Quincy get close to the Route's master. Their primary attacks are indirect. Their spherical projectiles detonate when they collide with a target, inflicting massive injury to those not prepared to handle the kind of power associated with Endear Force. Quincy is no exception to this, so the more hits he takes (and he takes a lot of them), the less willpower he can muster up. He doesn't even consider using Starlight - or any of his weaponry for that matter - to even harm the foxes. Instead, he takes a massive parkour lesson and jumps on each cloud that he passes by. The higher up, the better. He does nearly fall off a few times, but with a little effort (and some creativity), he makes it up there to confront her. "What are you doing here? Why'd you throw that bolt of lightning at me?" Quincy asked. "I didn't. It was an attempt by one of the Endear Cards to upgrade your Guardian. I just thought it needed a bit of an upgrade." she answered. "Really? You mean you're not here to harm me?" Quincy curiously asked. "Oh no, I'm not. I'm only here to test you," she responded. Her human-like silhouette dispersed to reveal none other than--

"Ah, you're that grey bunny from... man I can't think of the name..." Quincy stated. This before he got thrown to the (invisible) wall by an Endear Detonator and hit by a whip. The whip grabbed his head before tossing him upward. "Are you going to train yourself against the unrelenting forces of a brain break?!" she asked. The Endear Cards - the ones Quincy likes the most - spin around the battlefield as the pink clouds shine in assorted colors. It was a battlefield no-one could forget!

Nancy Etude. A silhouette entity that always takes the form of the character that the one talking to them is most familiar with, in a sense. Quincy had known about her form for years yet couldn't become 100% acquainted with it yet. He doesn't even know the point of the "brain break". "What are you referring to?" Quincy asked, now on the ground getting up. As Nancy puts her whip away, she says, "An entity much like yourself who does not have an affinity with Endear Force can only have a glimpse at these cards for about 2 seconds. If you can increase this limit, then the Reverb adjustment can be yours. But first, you have to prove to me how well you can withstand my attacks." She strikes Quincy with her whip more than once, Quincy blocking each strike as they come along. He's unable to summon Starlight to his position, as the Guardian is being put on standby to prevent Quincy from cheating. "Why are you so powerful?" Quincy asked. "Why are you so weak? You have all the firepower you need, and you can't even harness it to knock me aside? What took you so long to develop your skills? Or are you hiding them from me to confuse and puzzle me? You should know--" Nancy asked. "I'm not hiding a thing from you at all. I know what my limitations are, and I know that I cannot surpass my 2 second...limit?" Quincy said before he realized that while he was talking to Nancy, he had stared at the cards in the background for 5 whole seconds. He had broken his limit without knowing. "6 seconds. 7 seconds. 8 seconds. 9 seconds. How far can I go?" Quincy asked, partly to himself. "The needle stops when the track has finished playing. But is there a way to bypass the runtime and keep going? The vinyl doesn't stop when the needle does, it stops when the user SAYS it's done!" Starlight states. His metaphor proves poignant, for he reveals that he's been concealing the bolt that the Endear Card threw at Quincy! He pierces his front with the bolt, giving both enlightened views of the world around them. Quincy gains a completely new moveset. Starlight gets upgraded to Starlight Reverb, which adds a circular fixture in his chest that allows him to use moves that require Endear Force. Additionally, Quincy now has 5 unique styles to choose from: Quasideity, which emphasizes wearing the opponent out with fast and weak attacks. Demigod, which uses a light amount of brute force combined with the weak attack part provided through Endear Force. Intermediate, which provides a steady balance of Endear Force and regular attacks with help from Starlight. Greater, which prioritizes Endear Force and Starlight over regular attacks, only using them when necessary. Overdeity is a last resort move and involves overexerting the user, pushing their attacks to the highest limit possible. After the 5-minute time limit, however, they enter a cooldown period of 7 seconds. After that, the moveset has an added cooldown period of 5 minutes. This makes it very crucial that it be used as a last resort.

Quincy discovers his new powers and throws a hexagon-shaped projectile at Nancy, pushing her back a little.

"You passed the test. Now can I see how dirty-minded you are?" Nancy asks. "You want me to do what?!" Quincy asked in surprise.

\------------------------------------------------------------

[May 23-24: World Revolution Part 1]

"Actually, that's the STUPIDEST thing you could have ever produced. Do you know how much more powerful I am now?" Quincy replied. The red-bordered cards, Arousal Cards, then became surrounded by Quincy's Endear Force Drones. "These drones don't stop until their target's GONE. I hope you have a lovely day."

"I contacted The Denizen before you got here. She told me that these cards that you found will get you kicked out of the world. So I'm going to prematurely erase it for you and use a chunk of it for my own--" Nancy spoke before Quincy stunned her with a hexagon projectile, launched her up in the air using Starlight and finished the job with the meanest string of attacks ever known. Quincy left her up there hanging by Starlight's hand as he fled out of there. No sooner than that did a swarm of pink pass by Quincy's darker-than-dark view. He couldn't see where he was going, so he didn't know what to do. He finally arrived at this abandoned warehouse filled with fallen structures and debris everywhere. It was like it was recovering from an explosion. That swarm of pink from earlier was, in fact, the foxes that Quincy had gone out of his way to avoid. They were repaying him for his kindness (though unintentional) by moving some of the debris out of the way so that Quincy could pass by. He didn't know why they were helping him, but he was gonna need all the help he could get. After they signaled him to leave the facility, Nancy jumped out of the glass wall and tackled Quincy to the ground. She wasn't going to let him leave so easily. However, Quincy had other ideas. He used his free hand to rocket himself out of Nancy's grip with an Endear Card. Starlight followed him out of there and they both arrived at Exhibit CITY... with a noticeable lack of a Neo Reactor coupled with Delta, Reverse Dog, and Exciter fighting off the Arousal Drones. One of them was following behind Quincy as he ran to support the heroes. Starlight teleported behind him and threw it so far that it disappeared behind the water's edge. It took a while for the pink foxes to show up and drive the drones away, but when they did, EVERYONE noticed, and it was spectacular. Like an aurora borealis reflecting from the earth's waters. "What was all the commotion about?" Delta asked. "It's nothing, just a little motion. We have nothing to worry about here." Quincy said when Nancy was on her way there to reclaim her place as the one who will erase the world. Then...

"Change!" Starlight called out.

Everyone was warped back to Exhibit MASTER before Nancy could even notice them, which took the pink foxes with them. Quincy turned back to look at his new army as Delta noticed something on the wall, which showed Exhibit CITY. "What is she doing?" Delta asked. Quincy turned back around and stated, "Reconstructing what the Pink Sun had made for us and us only. Bet you a penny he ain't gonna show up and do some justice about it."

The Pink Sun descends from the sky, said something non-descript to Nancy before the silhouette backed up against one of the walls, and got vaporized by the Sun's deadly lasers. She did not even have TIME to colonize a thing. “Glad that’s over.” Quincy remarked.

“Did anyone else notice something flying over us when we teleported?” Delta asked. They all look behind themselves.

Nothing quite scaled to the size of this magnificent army of Remnants before. Even the foxes were scared, and they have been through some rough stuff.

Starlight then came over Quincy and gave him a tip. "Your Endear Cards have special properties. Try raising one of them in the air."

Quincy did just that, and it transformed into a gun! "Quite big, don't you think?" Starlight remarked. Quincy aimed it and fired it forward. Everyone got out of the way as the rainbow-colored beam obliterated everything in its path. "All of those Succubuses, gone. All because you had cute stuff on standby." Starlight said. "You possess a customizable set of weaponry! The 8 Colors of Death is not the only gun you have, either! Watch when you meet more enemies!"

"You did all of that with ONE weapon? You have POTENTIAL!" Exciter exclaimed. "He's a valuable resource for our quest." Reverse Dog said. "Quest for what?" Quincy asked. "The world IS ending, but from a different root. If you can stop the process, it would be pleasant. The world is ending because of an overflow of Remnants trying to harm the Solemn Bridge. The Bridge is where people go to get their strength from the Prayer Force, which you may have heard of or even used. It's not a place where you travel, but a place you contact. If we can't destroy the Remnants, we can't save the world." Delta explained. "Which world?" Quincy asked. "Both of them. And before you ask, that gun you used earlier will not work on all of them. You need more weaponry." Delta said. "We need to move to our final area: Distortion A0."

"Are there more numbers?" Quincy asked.

"No, just A0. It's up in space." Delta said.

Quincy's eyes lit up in surprise.

“I’m getting sick and tired of this cliché.” Reverse Dog commented.

\-------------------------------------------------------------

[May 25-28: World Revolution Part 2: Spare the Child]

Distortion A0. A major flaw in the back of the head. A messed-up point in space where none shall go. It's from this point onward that no other location, either here in the Metaverse or there in Solution City, even matters anymore. This is all because I, Quincy, have started to see things upon taking on the different spatial works of art up in the air. These different stars and galaxies up there... They make me feel anxious inside. As if I hadn't done enough to contribute anywhere. Wait... What kind of contributions HAVE I done? This isn't MY work of art... This is someone else's! I know exactly where I'm going next! I'm going to run up there and show them what territory they've crossed!

I don't know what's gotten into him. I'm his Soul Guardian, yet I feel like I have taken a life of my own. Is this a request from the Pink Sun? What am I to do now? I feel like I'm the one taking charge of this crew and not Quincy. He needs help. A way to grow some self-confidence. I haven't recorded any evidence that he needs any... That's a sign. A sign that our developments haven't progressed enough. Not enough time has happened in our lives for us to grow up and become proper people.

"Quincy, are you warping reality? Because Delta, Reverse Dog, and Exciter are not present--"

"Starlight now's not the time. They're gone because I mandated it. This is all a "me" journey now. Positively no-one can intrude--"

Starlight just grabbed Quincy by the neck. "Is that jealousy that I sense in your heart? Or are you mad because you're absolutely talentless?" he growled.

"Yes, I am. In fact, you haven't noticed this yet, but I'm in control of the whole journey! The very essence of this text giving you and I life, I've been jotting down every word. I have the full potential to erase you from the list of people I've met. This is the line of space where my control over the Metaverse is absolute. Not even the Pink Sun can do anything about it. Remember when it said I was a reality-warper? It did NOT lie to you! Selfishness is out-of-bounds today!" Quincy explained in such a gleeful tone. He was so glad to be in his comfort zone that he didn't even care who was there and who was missing. If he had power and could go after whoever he wanted, he was FINE. Starlight hated it, but Quincy didn't care about that, either. "Just wanna let you know, I'm keeping my things so that in case you want to go after me, you wouldn't stand a chance," Quincy said.

"Are you sure about that?" Starlight asked. He then closed his circular chest opening as a peculiar sound rang off. "What's going on?" Quincy asked. "You're not really an evil soul. You are being tormented by something and it's showing hard. I don't know what it is, but we need to get it out of you." Starlight explained. "Oh no, Starlight! It's a recurring feeling, you don't get it! I want to be great just like these stars are! I cannot completely do so because I'm under heavy pressure to get things done elsewhere! (Starlight: Where elsewhere?) Let me guess... Irrelevant things. I don't WANT to improve on my hobbies and skills. It falls on getting what I want the effortless way. If I can't do that, nobody else gets to do anything. No two people can apply for the same role! Once I take the slot, you're left behind! Even if I fail at what I do, I won't improve just because YOU told me to! It's a matter of effort, and I'm not a man of effort. DON'T pressure me! Take it easy and let the experience do the talking." Quincy rambled. Starlight took all that in. "Yep. An intruder of the soul. It looks like we'll need to crack the shell open to get to the fruit. However, I'm not sure how to do that without destroying the host. Looks like I'll need backup." he said to himself.

Starlight flies over to the large cluster of stardust in front of the massive platform. "I'm going to need some reinforcements!" he shouted. "Of what kind?" the Pink Sun asked. "Someone worthy of boosting self-confidence." Starlight asked. "In that case, then..."

A green rabbit flew from the stars. It was none other than Sprite, an inhabitant from Solution City! His Soul Guardian is a diamond-clad reality warper known as Crystal Clear. "Hey, joker! You're me if you get your act right. I heard all your comments from over here! This Guardian here can relay anything from anyone for me to hear. I see an attention-seeking talent-less somebody over where I can beat some sense into!" he said while diving down where Quincy is. "Never thought I'd meet myself," Quincy said. "You're me? How are we connected?" Sprite asked. "Don't answer that. How would you respond if I showed you this?" He raised a certain Tier-3 Endear Card. He had gathered it from the Metaverse itself since it's well-preserved in Quincy's memory. He walks around Quincy while saying this, "You gather cards like this, appreciating their worth, yet you get sick to your stomach when you do. Why? You have jealousy in your heart, and that's a cardinal sin! At least I know what to do and say when I see a thing like this. Those Metaverse Junctions where you get the cards from often overexcite you. When you see a thing like this, you DIRECTLY compare it to your work, which is minuscule by sheer comparison. You wear that average-at-best drawing on your tunic as a useless badge and call it standard? I believe there's another way to go about this."

He rips the "badge" off Quincy's garment and tosses it out in space.

"There. I don't care about your ego. All I need from you is some skill, confidence, and EFFORT. Don't like that word? I'll say it AGAIN!

Effort. (He gets close to Quincy's face while saying this.)

I'll be honest with you, I never expected this much of a baby-ish attitude from someone who THINKS he's worthy of calling himself a HERO. You are not that at all if a drill sergeant like me can bully you. Grow a spine, young man."

"Those words don't deter a self-centered man like me," Quincy said. He pulls out the Solution Sword... or well, a negative-colored version of it. Sprite had the real thing, but he did not bother pulling it out. “Talk about stolen property, young man!” Sprite said as he waited for Quincy to approach him. Once he did, Sprite summoned Crystal Clear and moved him under the ground. "In one move, I can instantly ground you." Sprite taunted. "That pun doesn't make sense," Quincy said as he freed himself from the ground and swung at Sprite. Crystal Clear blocked the hits and telekinetically threw Quincy all the way out in space. Sprite gave chase and started an air combo on Quincy that carried him further out into the depths of the cosmos. Quincy felt his equipment disappearing before him. Crystal Clear had taken them from him and retrieved them to Sprite! "Think twice before you engage in thievery, got it?" he said. "What's the Pink Sun gonna do next? I bet that wise little sphere wouldn't think twice before wiping you off the map." Sprite taunted. "Say your words. I have enough to mess around with! Even if I DO go crazy over the talent of one-- no, MULTIPLE people, I'll still have enough energy to spare--" Quincy said. The Pink Sun then came over and pulled him apart. Quincy felt every ounce of pain afterward. "I know what's going on with his heart. It's already going wild." the Pink Sun said. "Why?" Sprite asked. "It's the Endear Card that Starlight jammed into it. He's deliberately hyping it up to reveal his inner sins. Now that we know what the target is, there's one more thing we need to do." Pink Sun explained. "What is that?" Sprite replied.

"Don't let him go near anything resembling paper and pencil. He's not allowed to draw anything at all. In fact, he's not allowed to exert anything resembling effort. Not until my further discretion. I will handle him from now on. Now Sprite, how about you go further up into the Cosmic Expanse where I was before and take up the canvas? You try drawing something!" Pink Sun answered. Quincy's heart was about ready to jump out of the guy. The Pink Sun made it stay completely still. "Face the devil. Learn from people that try harder than you do. If you cannot do that, you don't deserve a soul." it said to Quincy.

"This is a privilege and a half!" Sprite said to himself when he got to the gigantic art museum that is The Expanse. Filled with all sorts of artistic wonders (from classical to modern) from top to bottom, this incredible structure had different sections for diverse kinds of creations, from watercolor to digital art. All Sprite had to do was find his way. "I'll create something decent in no time at all! It just takes practice... and tons of it. It also takes confidence, something my lowlife brother completely lacks." he said to himself. It was a joy just walking through the place. The structure was PERFECT. Too bad Quincy could not come along.

The man was seeing stars. Stars traveled throughout the night sky, showing off the creations that Quincy had become jealous of through constellations. It angered the guy to no end. Sprite had everything. Quincy had nothing. The madness developed into an inability to think, and so Quincy developed visions. He saw colorful tunnels and starry mixtures. He had driven himself to sleep doing this, but the visions followed him there and drove him to a dream-like state. Unbeknownst to him, the Pink Sun had done that to him to dull the pain that was about to come when it dug into his inner being to find the thing responsible for making his mind up to be the way it is. "I can't find anything. I cannot at all. Does this mean that the sin had built its way into Quincy himself? Was he always like this?" it said to itself.

"Either way, Exhibit MASTER had centered itself around Quincy and became one with him. This explains why Distortion A0's exit is blocked off. If anyone tries to go, they will see nothing but darkness."

Unfortunately for Sprite, the worst possible thing just had to happen to him. Just when he found the Canvas on the left side of the room, the world spun around him. Indeed, it made positively no sense! The compression of the entire Metaverse was unprecedented. Sprite didn't see it coming, that's for sure. He would think the Pink Sun did it to crush Quincy into a bite-sized disaster. But the real reason was far worse. Much, much worse.

Upon waking up in a non-descript forest covered with leaves, Sprite just had to look around. Everything except him resembled PlayStation game graphics. Over there on that side of the forest was a dying Pink Sun. Every card in the gallery, which totaled 3,600+, surrounded him. "What's the matter?" Sprite called out as he ran to the Pink Sun. "Quincy obtained absolute power. I don't know where he got it from, but he broke from my grasp and fatally wounded me. I think his heart might've overflowed and nullified anything I could do to him." Pink Sun explained. Sprite just whirled the cards to him and surrounded himself with them. They were absorbed into his already existing deck of 1,000+ cards as Sprite became an infinitely more powerful being. However, despite telling the Pink Sun that he was going to make things right...

His next journey to the Building Where Ends Meet ended sourly. Quincy descended from above to land on the platform. The moon can be seen from below the night sky, and it was quite big. A massive city can be seen below the platform's edges. It appears that the dark building was indeed a clock tower. Are we in London? Who knows? All that Quincy had to say to Sprite was that the world was being built in the former's image. Nothing was going to stop him there, and he's right. Even as Sprite confronted him with more cards than a game of Old Maid, Quincy just fired back with a current of lightning. Sprite just took the Solution Sword and used it to block the electricity. In response to Quincy's display of electrocution, he took and Endear Card and transformed it into a pair of claws. Once he put away the sword, he went after Quincy with his shockproof razors. Clash after clash, they dueled and dueled some more. Crystal Clear tried to teleport Quincy to a more vulnerable state, but Quincy caught on, incapacitated Crystal Clear with a pickaxe to the head, and was about to do the same thing to Sprite. Both rabbits were hovering over the building - and thus, the city - as they struggled to see who could control the world better. They dashed about in the open air, a whirlwind of massive proportions swirling around them as they clashed, throwing all manner of energy projectiles at each other. It was a battle for the ages, but Quincy had other plans. "I whipped up this tempest to carry me into parts unknown! You have more rooms to discover than just this!" he said as he threw Sprite into the Tower of Initiative, which this time was filled with floating gears that looked ready to attack someone. It was Quincy's dungeon to throw those that get in his way to. It had three floors and a whole lot of time manipulation.

At least Starlight found his way outside the tower, though he had to keep hidden from Sprite, because the last time Sprite saw him, he was associated with Quincy. But Starlight knew what happened. He was ready to tell Sprite about it.

After getting up, Sprite looked around him and above him. The gears above him were VERY hostile, spinning around aggressively. Since this was the Tower of Initiative, these were the gears on the wall that Impulse brought up. They weren't gears for improving behavior at all! Since Quincy controls the Metaverse, the gears have been repurposed for attacking anyone who attempts to get to him. They didn't have time to transform into their animal counterparts before Sprite just spun around with his sword, whipping up a large tornado that consumes them all. "That should do it for that group. Who needs to swing around their sword aimlessly and waste their energy doing so when you can just lead with a good move?" Sprite commented. "It's unnatural how many swordsmen do so and fail miserably because they weren't careful." Crystal Clear replied. Walking out of the room with the windows, they reach a fancy hallway decked out with candles, gold chandeliers, and tables. "Is Quincy really this self-centered?" Crystal Clear thought. Neither did any of them know that Starlight was there as a shadow on the wall. He leaped about, out of sight from Sprite and Crystal Clear. They didn't even notice a shadow on the wall because it was so small and constantly moving! Starlight took this chance to unlock the entrance to the second floor by opening the door above, revealing the stairs. He went up and never got detected in Sprite's eyes again. "Those are the stairs to the second floor, let's go--" Crystal Clear told Sprite before 5 clones of Quincy and Sprite appeared all around them. "I saw you before you saw me," Quincy said over a non-existent intercom.

Crystal Clear ducked under his teleportation portal as Sprite readied his sword.

Sprite kicked one into the wall, pulverizing it with a shockwave from his sword.

Crystal Clear returned from his portal and kicked another clone into the table, snapping its neck with the edge of the table.

Sprite grabbed Crystal and threw him into another clone, carrying it into Crystal's portal.

The two others attempted to rush Sprite from behind, but Quincy turned around and bisected them both.

Crystal came back from the portal, having suffocated the other clone.

"So, are we done with that?" Crystal asked.

"Let's make it up the stairs first. Then we can start asking questions." Sprite replied.

The second floor comes with its own little surprises: Sprite's Canvas. "I finally found it!" Sprite exclaimed. Both Soul and Soul Guardian walk towards the canvas, with Sprite looking upon it in wonder and intrigue. Sprite takes his time drawing upon it because he didn't choose the Canvas. It chose HIM. The kaleidoscopic world within the canvas unveiled itself, giving Sprite a companion to work with.

"I heard you were looking all over for me," she said with the accent of an African American woman.

"Yes, actually I was. Do you have a name?" Sprite asked respectfully.

"My name is Stacy. This Canvas has been a housing spot for me ever since the thing was made. I'm someone that can help motivate those who are struggling to find their way in the world of arts and crafts." she explained. A cyan feline with a profound taste in visual media, Stacy weaponizes the element of ice by skating around and firing ice shards. When she isn't freezing enemies to the touch, she's usually making ice puns.

Sprite starts drawing a heart on the canvas when three Ambient Gears try to bull-rush Stacy. "The three colors you need are red, green, and orange! Color that heart and the Canvas will absorb it! Your artistic repertoire will improve, and your side of the Expanse will grow!" Stacy shouts to Sprite. The more he draws, the more they get close. Stacy just ends it right there and now by touching one of the gears. Doing this, she unleashes a wave of ice that freezes them all in their tracks.

"These guys just need to chill out." Stacy quips.

"Your puns are the worst." Sprite thought to himself.

"Are you done with the heart yet?" Stacy asked Sprite.

"Got it done in record time," Sprite said.

"No, no, no, NO! An artist NEVER rushes his work! You must give each step its own momentum and grace! Just wait 'till the Artist's Guild sees that..." Stacy exclaims. "Regardless, you did a good job."

They both exit the Canvas World, with the drawing now firmly embedded in Sprite's side of the Expanse.

"What now?" Sprite asks.

"We've got company." Stacy cautiously points out.

Indeed, 6 Ambient Gears have surrounded them both. They both ready their weapons as they defend the Canvas...

Then a pink beam shines on the Gears before a wave of light destroys all 6. They both turn around to see who could have done that.

"Starlight?!" Sprite exclaims.

"Not so loud. Quincy might hear us." Starlight tells him.

By the time the heroes turn around, however, they've come face to face with Quincy himself. They were all standing on a floating rock platform high above a desert. Stacy and Starlight then vanished before Sprite even figured out what was going on. Sprite couldn't even call Crystal Clear over to help him out. "I've decided today that Soul Guardians are absolute jokes. This is a problem for both of us. We're both going through the same thing." Quincy said to Sprite. He was seemingly standing there ready for Sprite to hit him, but he wasn't actually there at all! Sprite stepped over and looked at Quincy's position. Sure enough, he was covered up by a projection. The arena started bending itself, though Sprite didn't move. "Haven't you noticed that I projected the Metaverse specifically to cloud the fact that my artistic achievements aren't nearly as welcome as those found on Tier-3 Endear Cards? Those are well-respected, making me seem like someone below his caliber." Quincy said to Sprite. As plants started growing under the rocks, Sprite started wondering HOW Quincy can do all of this. Regardless, his only reply was, "Maybe that's because you need a few years under the canvas."

"We're not talking about the canvas and I refuse to touch it," Quincy replied.

"What're you going to do about your complex, then?" Sprite asked.

"Simple. I'm going to wreck all of these cards - all of them - and then be done with it." Quincy said.

"Eh, two can play that game," Sprite said.

Sprite then enters Quincy's world of frozen reality and confronts him face-to-face. "I'm not going to stop you from doing this. I really am not." Sprite says.

Quincy, confused, says, "Wait, really? Even if I wreck all the cards, you're just going to stand there?"

"Indeed. I wouldn't do anything to get in your way as long as you have it all. We both have the same problems, but only one of us has a chance to improve. You've trapped everyone inside your world of frozen reality - which is all yours to manipulate - so that you can eventually erase them. I can understand that perfectly. But the Metaverse is gone. It's all gone. The closest thing we have to it is the Expanse, but you can't go near that in fear of being melted away by your own jealousy. Think about it. My Canvas is so harmful to you that you chose to defend it rather than letting me express my own free will. That's all fine with me too. Just don't expect anyone to not oppose you in the meantime. However, I won't even harm you this time around. You haven't done anything wrong, you just need a massive confidence boost. I don't know where you would get it from, but it won't be me. I'll leave it alone for the time being while you relocate to get your head straight." Sprite says. He evacuates the missing heroes and rushes them out of the Frozen Reality. Quincy can only stare in disbelief at how he managed to do it so fast. It all came to a head when the world of random objects and zipper holes collapsed into Quincy's soul, permanently eliminating the concept of a Soul Guardian and reducing him to a mere thoughtform.

"Time really flies when you're thinking about yourself all day, doesn't it?" Sprite tells everyone. They were all inside the Expanse.

"What happened up there?" Exciter comments. "I didn't even get to use any of my skills!"

"Quincy froze you all in his world before you COULD do anything. Figures, since dealing with all 6 of us could really tire a jealous guy out." Sprite explains. "Did you find anything new in Quincy's version of the Expanse?"

"Well, it carries over here as well. We found a movie theater behind the art museum." Stacy replies.

"A movie theater? Can you describe to me how you found it?" Sprite asks.

"It took a ton of effort, given the Expanse itself was crushingly hard to find in such a large area. However, we noticed a movie playing behind one of the dark walls. We couldn't tell you what the movie was about to save our skins, but I think it's around here too." Stacy replies.

The six people check the door behind the art museum. Sure enough, there are three columns of chairs, six rows each. Backed by a powerful sound system, the lights in the theater are lit because there isn't a film being played on it right now. It looked positively majestic. The five have never seen anything like it, but they do wonder why it exists.

But something followed them there. A tank leaped out of the wall and transformed into a caricature of Quincy. It was the guy's last-ditch effort to eliminate the six friends and prevent them from protecting the Tier-3 cards.

"This is the Master Room! It's where the best cards are hidden! Change this cinema to the Master Room and show me the cards!" Magnet-Q3 said to them in a menacing voice. The heroes readied their weapons as Stacy charged in and froze the floor. She encased herself in ice before Magnet could attack her.

Sprite warped out of the arena, hoping to surprise attack Magnet.

Exciter ran up and did a punch combo on Magnet before being knocked away.

Delta attempted to hit Magnet and came very close, but Magnet twisted her arms behind her and threw her at the screen. Her Delta Force prevented her impact from harming the screen.

Pinky went the careful route and fired pink projectiles at Magnet. Her dodging is expert-level, as Magnet couldn't even get close, even once. Their fight lasted the longest, for when Reverse Dog tried to intervene, Magnet knocked him away and charged up his arm cannon.

Pinky took the chance to knock him away with a hard hit to the body. It worked...

And Sprite came back with a whole deck of Endear Cards. Tier-3 ones. "See what I did there? You'll never find the Master Room like this," he said.

He shuffled the cards and then pulled one put. He turned it into a flashlight that shone a brilliant tri-colored light. "Orange, Blue, and Red. That's all I need to beat you," he said as he turned it into a laser sword.

Clashing at Magnet, Sprite swung and hit him more than once. Once he launched him, he switched up and took out a massive RPG (rocket-propelled grenade).

He launched the grenade, but Magnet caught it. "You thought it would do something to me, but you're dead wrong." Magnet said. He threw it aside and confronted Sprite by teleporting to him.

He punched Sprite multiple times, the guy blocking each attack. When a person puts their arms up, they gain a small field around each arm that perfectly blocks a blow. That field is invisible, but the effect isn't.

Magnet's attacks included strands of light organized into shapes fired as projectiles, white webs from the arms to grab people with, a razor-sharp yoyo, and lots of explosion-related attacks from firing missiles to projecting explosions on the ground. That wasn't even all of the moves, either. The fight dragged on for a good amount of time.

"I think we need a solution to all of this. How about all of these?" Sprite said to Magnet. He arranged all of the cards into a circle. Sprite levitated Magnet's gun (which is actually Quincy's) to him, readied his aim, fired the gun into the circle.

Particle collider.

Magnet was bisected by the resulting beam, which transferred the result to Quincy himself. Within seconds, his thoughtform was no more.

"Is everyone okay?" Sprite asked. Everyone slowly got back up and was relieved that Sprite was still alive. "Couldn't have said that better," Delta replied.

All was well. The Master Room was carefully concealed behind the separate dimension that Sprite had obtained when he inherited Crystal Clear's ability as an Affinity. We're gonna have a lesson on this later on. Sprite had goaded Quincy to fight inside the Master Room's cinema form because he knew that Quincy would be the most beatable there. His jealousy led him into that precise trap.

Ain't he the best?

Chapter Management  
Edit Chapter  
Chapter 2: B-Side  
Summary:  
Quincy's thoughts mutate to another world, where Delta takes up the errand of teaching him how to control himself around others. His monologues make up most of the chapter, alongside sequences taking place inside the otherwise unused Visionary City.

Chapter Text  
Alright, so now I'm stranded in a city, the Visionary City. Before we talk about that, let me share some info with you. Contributors can be found ALL OVER Solution City. Anyone can join that club. Seemingly anyone can join it. It turns out; you can only have fame if you do the right things for the right reasons. I tended to rush my work in the in-between hours of my journey. There are some things you may not have read about that involve me. That's because I deliberately left them out. For now, let's concentrate on the main idea. You see, I have a SERIOUS issue with not being able to create anything that can allow myself to be known. To be fair, I mostly create to GET known. That's not how an artist should do things, I know. I just didn't know any better, and as a result, I often made some very messy creations. Not to worry, I'm going to get better. Eventually, I might join the ever-changing Artist's Guild and improve myself there. I think someone's coming.

3 hours earlier

"I have an errand to run. See you in a few days!" Delta said to the other five. They said goodbye and waved to her before she left. They were all in Solution City, utterly invisible to the other residents there due to them all hailing from the Metaverse, so they were okay. Delta warped herself to Visionary City, a place she didn't expect to find in the strands of the universe. "I thought this city had vanished a long time ago! It became completely erased when it fell short to war, didn't it? Either way..." she said to herself. "Oh, there he is. Might wanna introduce myself to him," she said when seeing Quincy.

"Remember me, Quincy? It's been a while, so I thought I might want to check in once in a while. How have things been going since you got here?" Delta says to Quincy with an oddly enthusiastic attitude. "What's with the theatrics?" Quincy inquired. "Didn't think you'd end up in a city with buildings much taller than both of us. It looks so ancient and Vatican City-like. Maybe we should take a walk and talk about our feelings." she said. Little did they both know that the Greek Zodiac was out and about in this territory. Sagittarius, Leo, Libra, and Gemini had already claimed the Visionary City as their landmark. They were powerful entities outlined by blue stripes that also gave their bodies form. Sagittarius weaponizes the arrow, Gemini is the master of duplication, Libra makes every strike of her sword count, and Leo symbolizes the pride of the lion. The four of them continue to stalk their prey in the shadows.

Just then, a lightning bolt the size of a car struck Quincy; it did not harm him any. Instead, lightning enveloped him, and he was able to use it to an absurd degree! His first reaction to this was to charge forward and grab Leo, charging him with lightning. Leo wrestled with Quincy throughout the entire encounter and even tried to attack him. However, Quincy struck back with a few melee attacks before finishing him off with two significant currents of lightning fired from his hands. The force from the blast split the blue lion in half, attracting the minerals inside of it to Quincy. Once the crystals are absorbed in his system, Quincy starts to change in ways he never expected. For one, his stats improve all around. There's a catch to his lightning powers, though; if the Zodiac overpowers him, then he will lose these powers and eventually wholly fade away. That's the bottom line.  
"Where'd you get those powers from?" Delta inquired. "I don't know. A bolt of lightning struck me, and I took down a lion. It just happened. Anyways, can I tell you about--" Quincy explained. "I'm the one that will ask the questions in this session of therapy. You can ask them later, but let me start the conversation." Delta states.

They walked down the streets, unaware that Sagittarius was hiding around the corner, readying his arrow. Sagittarius' arrows pierce through their targets, dealing extra damage not only to the one it hits but also to anyone behind the victim. Combined with his impressive footwork, Sagittarius was tough to keep up with, for he had ended the lives of many who inhabit Visionary City. Meaning that if a person who had a chance of coming back to World A got killed by Sagittarius - or any of the Zodiac characters in general - then they wouldn't be able to go anywhere. It meant final death. World A is where places like Solution City are, and it also provides the gateway to other worlds.

I drew something one day. It wasn't very complicated, it wasn't straightforward, either. I thought it looked quite decent for a project created by someone so messy. I threw it out there and showed it to the Artist's Guild. Only one person there - who wasn't even a part of that Guild - congratulated me. I was in shock that day, for I expected something much better than that. Perhaps some methods of improvement, maybe. I didn't get any of that. I only got that one message. You couldn't believe how devastated I was, but to be fair, I didn't know any better. You don't become a masterclass creator on the first day. You have to keep improving on that craft. It takes years to make something masterful - for some even months - but that magnum opus will set the standard for the rest of the things you create with effort. Believe me; I studied up on quite a few people in the Guild that make better things than I do. If that isn't an incentive to try drawing more, I don't know what is. I say this because those masterpieces they create are an inspiration, not meant to intimidate new-coming artists like me. These are all the things I learned from Delta, anyway. Combined with my knowledge of the Artist's Guild, I think I'm going to have to rethink the way I approach them.

"To join the Guild, you have to put effort into your work. I know that's not something you specialize in, but it has not to be done if you EVER want a chance to at least have a rank in that organization." Delta told me.  
"What rank?" I asked.  
"Inspired. You drew what you drew because someone else gave you that motive to be as good as that." Delta explained.  
"Someone? I only mentioned a group." I told her. I wasn't trying to hide anything from her. However, she said something to me that caught me off-guard.  
"Sure you did, but based on what you said concerning the reception, I discerned that you were referring to one person rather than the whole Guild. I won't burden you much more, but do know that if one person gets a saintly reception, that doesn't mean--" Delta told me. I threw this at her, though:  
"Your next line is: That doesn't mean you have to put your pride out there for all to see, either!" I told her. She was dead speechless after that, but she knew that I predicted her next line correctly. She was rather impressed, but the words still stand. I know better now not to let the reception of others grace me in the wrong way. I should join the celebration instead!

Sagittarius was just around the corner, though. He readied one of his arrows, hoping to pierce whoever comes around and is unlucky enough to see him. However, Quincy heard the string being pulled back and urged Delta to back herself up against the wall. Once she did, Quincy fired a small bolt of lightning at the power line above them. It traveled across the wire, then jumped off the power cable and hit Sagittarius' arrow. Sagittarius recoiled back due to the force of the lightning. "Whoever's controlling this lightning has sensitive ears! ...Wait. I think I know what's going on here." Sagittarius thought as he jumped off his platform and retreated by jumping across the buildings ahead of him. "Stay where you are. I'll make sure this next enemy won't stick around for long." Quincy said to Delta. Around the corner was a fairly average-looking town, with a restaurant and a few other buildings. The only thing that mattered to Quincy was finding Sagittarius, so he imbued his body with lightning and jumped from metal pole to metal pole. "He can't be anywhere far..." Quincy thought. Upon jumping SUPER high up as a result of his kinetic energy raising his speed, he was able to quickly locate the archer and zoom towards him, cracking the asphalt when he landed. Although Delta managed to catch up by sneaking around the buildings, she didn't want to get near the ground zero of their battle, so she chose to watch. "The only reason why they sent us was to bring you down even further and impede your progress to a better life." Sagittarius taunted. "Who sent you?" Quincy asked. "Nobody in particular. We're just purgatorial assassins. Leo was only easy pickings because you were so fast. I, however, refuse to slow down to someone--" Sagittarius explained before Quincy surprised him with Dual Lightning. "Quite a shock. It'll take much more than that to finish me off, however!" Sagittarius shouted while firing three fire arrows. They bounced off the air and homed into Quincy. Quincy simply took off like the wind and had the arrows follow him. They canceled each other out due to bumping into the walls of the buildings, which caused them to stick to the walls as regular arrows would. Sagittarius fired three more, but not before Quincy leaped into the air, caught them, and threw them on the ground. He then rushed towards the archer, smacked him a few times with melee attacks, then kicked him away. Just in time for Quincy to use Arc Radius, which is five lightning bolts that bounce off of surfaces to get bigger, then once they reach maximum size, they combine into one big ball of lightning that explodes once it collides with its target! Within moments, only Sagittarius' bow remained from the ensuing explosion. Quincy, as a result, nearly knocked the power out with his skills.

Allow me to tell you about the Tier-3 Endear Cards. Forged by someone we don't refer to by name (it's that precious, I tell you!), these cards carry a valuable reputation to this day. It didn't feel quite right not to have the kind of affection I truly wanted, and as a result, I did indeed find the Master Room that Magnet-Q3 failed to find for me that day. It wasn't much, though. Just frames of those neatly preserved artifacts hung on the wall and displayed in cases. Nobody was allowed to touch them. Only the eyes could take in all the satisfaction only one genuinely talented individual could provide. The minute I found those creations, I DID feel the urge to destroy them plainly, but I knew right, and well nobody would take kindly to it. This downward spiral of events would only take me closer to the confines of Frozen Reality. It's my little world that I retreat in when I don't feel that great. But not even that would keep me from the sheer amount of envy that I felt down there. I nearly got exiled. If it wasn't for that man Sprite coming down here to repair some kind of "Prayer Bridge"... I don't recall there being such an artifact. What exactly did we come down there for if it wasn't to repair the Bridge? What kind of enemies got sealed down there? All I saw was gigantic foggy stardust. It must've blocked my view of the actual Bridge. Did the Pink Sun see my villainy coming and hide the Bridge from me because he knew that I would impulsively destroy it? So many questions, so little answers.

The next Zodiac was Libra. An elegant swordfighter who shows no mercy in battle, she possesses a reputation among the group as a real challenge, both in personality and in fighting style. Nobody could rival her in swordsmanship, and it was a real pain for those trying to make it out of Visionary. Those poor souls knew that if Sagittarius were too far away for him to make a good shot, Libra would find them and finish the job. They had no other motive other than "this place is mine and nobody else should inhabit it!".

"You need to control that!" Delta shouted.  
"My mistake, I just thought he would move so fast I would lose sight of him. I needed to off him quick." I told her.  
"Anyway, where's our next target? If those two tried to kill us, then who else is out there to carry out these assassinations?" I thought to myself. Delta said those same words back to me when I thought of them.

Libra was well on her way to approach the two when they thought of it. Her sword is quite sharp—no telling what it can cut, considering the sharpness of similar blades. A fearless warrior that fights like no other Zodiac, she was adamant about keeping up a fight. She made it a habit to compare her body count to Sagittarius', which he does not take well. This time, Gemini traveled with her to provide backup just in case she would ever be overpowered. "You know, I heard that the two new guys here CRUSHED two of our units, making it just the two of us," Gemini said. "You forgot about our project. Don't you remember?" Libra reminded him. "Oh yeah. We're still keeping him locked up just in case us two really DO go down." Gemini replied. Gemini was positively CRAZY. This aids his fighting abilities because he can clone himself and attack from any direction. His unpredictability was vital in combat. Who knows where he might be without his clones? Libra approached Delta and Quincy at the parking lot near the pharmacy (thankfully, nobody is around to see them fight) while Gemini hides behind the building itself.

"Allow me to introduce myself. I'm Libra, the third of the four members of the Eastern Zodiac. My body count is unrivaled, and it's all thanks to this sword of mine. It's so sharp..." Libra said before Quincy threw ball lightning at her, forcing her to think fast and cut it in two. "...it can cut lightning in half!" she finished. She rushed at Quincy and swung her sword at a speed that Quincy had to block to be able to track. "It's so fast. Maybe if I moved even faster..." Quincy thought as he threw his electric fists at her at the same speed she was going, moving faster every second. Soon enough, his punches were going at rates fast enough to create sonic booms! Libra was knocked back a few feet by one of those punches. Libra signaled Gemini to come out and reveal his power, but Delta tackled him before he could do anything. Quincy, meanwhile, charged up his body with lightning, changing the color of his outfit to white with blue outlines. His old self had faded entirely, all thanks to his new developments! Wordlessly glaring at Libra, he charged at her faster than the eye can see and took her sword away from her. "Don't say a word," he said as he cut her limb from limb and severed her body in half. To make sure she was gone, he cast some lightning down from the air, which vaporized her upper torso. The sword went with her.  
Meanwhile, Delta activated one of her rings, projecting a massive frost barrier that freezes Gemini's clones, which had been confusing her by charging in one-by-one. This also reveals the real deal, so she punched his head off. Once both Zodiacs had vanished, the Project spoke up. "The Dream Barrier has been unlocked, and it's about time I stop this development before it goes any further! Quincy, I expect full and honest cooperation with me!" it said aloud.

I'm not going down to this thing. Wherever it may be, I will find it and take it down. Where could it possibly lead? Wait.

The project teleported Quincy and Delta to the Dream Barrier, a colorful arena where it stands. "Have you really backed out of sin for long enough to draw my ire? You've become a new individual because you've broken from my grasp entirely! Now it's about to come to a close. I am stronger than you will EVER be, simply because I possess a large number of skills inherited from disparate sources across the seven years that we've both been alive! You're a refugee from that world, so it's about time I banished you back there! Those Endear Cards will be mine to des--" the project says.  
"Are you done talking?" I interrupted. I got tired of hearing this guy talk. He was a blue, robotic version of me that appears to have mastered time travel. He came all the way from 2013 to take me down and warp me back there to start the cycle over! Either way, this one was on me.

Magnet-FINAL started by charging into me. I kicked him back and repelled him with lightning. Not fazed by this at all, he hovered around the room, his after-images following him. Then he cast a lightning attack similar to mine, except it went around the entire room. Discharging electricity at specific points, we kept at our toes for long enough for him to descend and for Delta to smack him senseless and push him into the wall with her ring. Only a little bit damaged by this, he then dashed around the room, placing vertices where he traveled. When he came back to the middle of the arena, the vertices activated. This laser field didn't concern me in the least, because he left a vast open space in front of him that allowed me to throw him into the background.  
We soared through the open sky, trying to find Magnet-FINAL through the walls of an aerial hallway filled with movie posters. Delta gave me one of her rings to help find him. Since this radar ring conducts lightning, I charged it up and managed to find Magnet-FINAL. I electrically zoomed toward him, phasing through every wall I came across. He also found me and decided to try and hit me at the same time I would. We both flew back; I hit the wall, and he hit a bunch of furniture. We were flying around, clashing with our abilities. This was the way it was going to go. He threw gears at me; I threw lightning bolts at him. He would try and swing at me with a sword, but here's the good part.  
I took an electric sword and clashed back. This was all an experiment to wear him out because he never saw the next thing coming.  
"Are you done?!" I yelled at him.  
"One last trick and you're good to go," Magnet-FINAL said to me.  
His last trick was warping us both back to the Dream Barrier and conjuring five reddish-pink sparks. You hit one of these; they stun you for a painful amount of time, giving Magnet-FINAL a chance to finish you off for good. But I had a plan he didn't see coming at all.  
"Even if you do hit me..." I taunted.  
I pulled out the last Tier-3 of the month.  
"You'll still go down in style. You and me both." I said to Magnet-FINAL.  
The card's radiant energy disabled all five sparks AND sent Magnet-FINAL reeling. I felt so relieved that I could depend on the power of one of these Shatter Cards that I went ahead and charged the rest of it up with my lightning and fired it at Magnet. He went down like a sinking ship, going down in exploding glory. The Dream Barrier was gone, and we were sent back down to the Visionary City. The rapture lights were an entry point to World A. I knew it, and she knew it as well when she finally showed up. I gave her the radar ring back, and we said to each other:

"We're going back where we belong!"

The journey back to World A couldn't be more satisfying. My development carried me this far, and I wasn't willing to let it pass me. The next month ahead will be a conduit for me to shape my course.


	2. Spectrum

Reaction time (n): The amount of time it takes for someone to move before they get hit by something.

Quincy has lots of it here. After transferring over to Solution City from Visionary City, his lightning powers transformed themselves into a vast arsenal of abilities to use against large armies. These abilities are called Affinities. While no person has more than one Affinity, these abilities can change over time. Thus, a single Affinity can do so much more than what it appears to on the surface. Quincy's Affinity, Endear Force, can manipulate cards that activate from the back of the hand. Forty-eight cards per deck, up to 5 sets per user. The symbol determines each power, and the ability cannot go beyond the level of the user. Thus, Quincy has plenty to learn with his current deck.

Solution City, the city of hustle and hustling where many high buildings rise to the skies as the residents, all of whom are animals, somewhat quietly live their lives. Many of these people practice drawing and writing as their hobby, even earning money for their efforts from people that support them.  
There is a settlement that Sprite and his friends are said to be staying. Quincy goes there, but he makes sure that he isn't detected by Sprite, for the guy isn't sure whether to trust him or not. Doing so takes him behind an alley that another familiar face is hiding in.  
"You found me. I didn't think you'd do that. Tell me. If you or Sprite didn't run under any rules, where would you get your Endear Cards? Would you get them from somewhere you wouldn't usually go? Would your state of arousal be sufficient enough so that any sign of a reasonable conscience would cease from existence?"  
"How do you know I even possess such cards? I don't even know your name, and you know everything about me. Are you some mind-reader?" Quincy said.  
"Actually, no. I'm here to help you with your problems. I have some knowledge about the past on hand with me, and I'm more than strong enough to help you confront those issues. More specifically, I have mastered the art of time travel."  
"Time travel? How far have you gone back?" Quincy inquired.  
"As far back as 2013. That's where I met your great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather."  
"What does that even mean?!" Quincy responded.  
"I'll tell you later."  
"Can you at least tell me your name?" Quincy said.  
"Eschaton. Formerly known as Starlight, I ascended into godhood and hid away here so that nobody would notice me. I'll be your greatest ally from now on. Your greatest challenge from here on out is your distant family!" Eschaton said while stepping out from the shadows. A sleek, gold figure with transparent, ethereal wings, Eschaton looked like somebody who could take on an entire army and look good doing it. Indeed, his primary weapon was a large gold and black sword that can shred through most opposing forces like a laser cutter through glass. Eschaton had become quite strong ever since he ascended into a full-blown deity.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the city, Exciter was jogging and leaping across the city buildings, relieved that he finally gets to exercise his powers once more. He had taken the form of a mouse when he entered Solution City. The air of the place was lovely and pure; anyone could go for a walk in the spring-time weather. What Exciter didn't see coming was a polygonal alien. It had teleported right into his path, knocking him on his back. When he looked up, the humanoid polygonal menace had stared him down like a pharaoh speaking to his servant. In one hand was a sword that looked more like a lance than an actual sword. The thing was unmoving, unfeeling; its glare could kill a tiny animal.  
"What's your deal?" Exciter asked. It didn't move or speak.  
"You look kind of strange, where'd you come from?" he wondered. As soon as he asked this, it raised its sword. Quick to retaliate, Exciter sent it flying with a kick. "Don't try anything funny!" he exclaimed. Just then, he looked up and saw five others like it flying from portals. He didn't know why they were up there, which made him more and more curious. "They must belong to an army. I don't know why, but this one tried to attack me. I'm going to do more investigating." Exciter said to himself. The alien he was fighting then got up and charged at him! Exciter made his move right away.  
He summoned his crystals while keeping it back with his hands.  
When the alien attempted to pierce him with its lance, Exciter just twisted its arm, broke it off with sheer force, and threw it aside.  
Exciter's crystals finished the job by electrocuting the alien with electric lasers.  
"Glad that's over," Exciter said to himself while staring upon the alien's shattered corpse on the ground. He had never seen anything like this before. This was well beyond what Encore was capable of. The closer Exciter got to the shattered alien, the more he could feel a weird essence coming from it. Almost as if the thing came from the passages of time itself...

Eschaton opens up a portal to a new location. Quincy checks the inside of that portal and sees a world bordered by blue hexagons surrounded by cards of all types.  
"This is the Hexagon Foundation. This is a little more restrained than the other side of it. This is what I was talking about when I mentioned a world with no rules. You should be fine gathering Endear Cards here." Eschaton said while Quincy crawled through the entrance. The place had cards floating in rows where it was possible to grab one and tuck it away in a deck. Obtaining new powers couldn't be easier! Quincy turned his head, however, and saw one of the aliens that Exciter was fighting earlier. Quincy then made it target him instead; it was chowing down on something that Quincy couldn't quite see.  
It lunged at him.  
Quincy raised his hands as if casting a spell. Suddenly, a pink aura discharged from his hands!  
The alien was caught in the resulting thunder-like current of energy and shattered to pieces!  
"Where'd THAT come from?!" Quincy exclaimed.  
"Even I'm foreign on this concept, and I'm supposed to be all-knowing," Eschaton replied. What neither of them knew is that the minerals that Quincy absorbed during his fights with the Zodiacs in Visionary City evolved into a particular type of energy only he and others like him can harness. It is called Radiance. Radiance is the lifeblood of Endear Force, and once used correctly, it is capable of letting its user perform many feats. Healing, increased combat capabilities, object materialization, and more are now at Quincy's grasp! He couldn't believe his eyes once he took in all of that knowledge, but neither did he later on...  
"Not even this place can escape the wrath of those that want to make a name for themselves," Eschaton said.  
"What do you mean?" Quincy replied.  
Eschaton spreads his arms wide and claps hard, like someone closing a book. Instantly, two walls close tightly, preventing anyone from entering the room between them.  
"I want to protect you from the raging amount of controversy present in that room. Don't ever bring it up, even to yourself or me." Eschaton said to Quincy. He didn't even do anything to have that room be closed off, but heeding the guy's words, it didn't matter much. All that mattered now is getting these cards in Quincy's deck.  
One of Eschaton's capabilities is to deny anything ever occurred in a particular location. By erasing everything that Eschaton chooses in a specific radius, he is ceasing the event entirely and also preventing anyone in the range from even knowing what happened. The mind-wiping effect has no end result on Radiant ones. Thus, Quincy was able to remember everything that Eschaton erased, but he didn't care. He was out finding cards to pick up by riding around in a miniature airplane Eschaton made for him, Danger Seeker. A wild ride, indeed. Red-bordered cards turned into flying aliens and met Seeker's Gatling fire head-on. Quincy knew precisely what to pick using Seeker's high-tech radar. It never missed a decent card.

Quincy's cards are powered by Radiance. There's no limit to how many cards he can use at once, but they do have a cooldown period. Abilities that Quincy can fire off include energy pillars, ice spikes, tornadoes, spears made of hard Radiance, boosting his moves with elements, healing others and himself, and the list goes on. It would be easier describing what Quincy ISN'T capable of. Precisely, the more (and better) cards Quincy has, the more versatile his movepool is. He can improve these cards through usage in battle. Rank goes from 1 to 5 stars; the higher, the better. Quincy's other weapon of choice was forged from 18 of his cards in the Archival deck. He sorted those out and put his better cards in his active set, giving him a much better range over which ones he would want to use. (No more old, useless cards from years ago where the good ones should be.) The other weapon of choice is a literal golden gun called the Target Force. It fires Radiance and has a tendency to stun enemies upon hit, setting them up for even more shots. The better Quincy's cards are on average, the stronger the gun. It predictably doesn't run out of ammo.  
The higher the rank of the card, the flashier and more useful the card is. For example, ice spikes become entire glaciers, tornadoes become bigger and move around, ripping apart the battlefield (and any enemies it hits), energy pillars become vertical lasers, healing abilities can revive those that die on the field, and so forth. This is the law of Radiant Energy, cuteness personified, according to Eschaton.

"The animals on your cards appear to be radiating this powerful force that enhances your attacks and creates new ones outright. This is extremely state-of-the-art," he said concerning this powerful ability.

Through Quincy's exploits, the Hexagon Foundation soon had part of its entire map revealed to him and Eschaton. Through that, the strands of time and space were unfurled to them both. This is what gave them access to another year in the past, entirely.  
"What did we cut open, and how?" Quincy wondered.  
Through open space, Exciter leaped by and was able to see the two for one second before drifting off into the space-time continuum.  
"What are you two doing here?" he managed to say.  
It was a miracle. Nobody had ever attempted the skill of time travel before. Exciter didn't even know how he also got this far. All he did was do Sprite a favor and explore "a mysterious dimension." For all he knows, he ended up in space.

He didn't. The year is 2016, and the number of cards here is astronomical. None of them could even be acquired. It's a spectacular festival of red-bordered cards galore, and that meant that Quincy and Eschaton had to do some fighting. This is Sector 4 of the Metaverse Junction, filled with enemies that Quincy has felt like he's seen before, but never actually encountered. Eschaton limits his abilities here and just relies on his sword. Meanwhile, Exciter is trying to figure out the miracle of shifted time. Nobody knows what's what, but the more they skip ahead, the more challenges they encounter.

"This is a world with no rules. Everything goes. Your heart's desire is revealed to you through these cards, and every attempt to fight it is met with intense pressure. The Radiance and the Passion do not mix, so I'd advise you to take your time." a mysterious figure says on top of the barrier dividing Sector 4 from Sector 3.

"It appears he's seen it. He's going to see all of it. Might as well set it up for him."

"This is Sector 4, and there are absolutely no rules contained in this or the Junction. That means every room is accessible if you play your cards right. Nothing hinders your progress. Especially not if you casually aim around, taking enough risks to finally let yourself go to the aims of your lack of conscience. You see it, right? I frequent this sector 24/7. That means all of these cards are mine: each and every single one of them. Their numbers break limits. I can command each one and have it transform into what's depicted. As for me, I have a little trick of my own. See, my Affinity gives me control over glass, which is what Sector 4 is bordered by. I can crack the glass, and send the shards flying at whoever I want. This gives me full control over the battlefield. It can shield me, protrude from the ground, summon itself in spike pillars, and so on. I should have an edge against him when he shows up!"

Sure, Quincy's journey may have turned him into a loose cannon, outright letting enemies survive thanks to his "art of evasion" ("Don't look directly at who you're up against! The cards will stun you!" he said) failing him before Eschaton literally knocks some sense into him. This doesn't prevent him from noticing that all of Sector 4's bordered by glass. The perpetrator leaps from his perch and confronts them head-on, making sure that Eschaton can't even move or use his powers by trapping him in a web using the cards around him.  
"I'm 2016's prime representative for the timeline. My name is Sear, and I don't even know why you're even in Sector 4," he said.  
"Me neither. We traced those cards flying around here to you, and if we need to shut down your operations to go back to where we came from, we will." Quincy said.  
"Well, you're already caught in my cycle. Those cards of yours will now be added to my collection." Sear said.  
Quincy just tries to smack Sear instead.  
Sear blocks it with one arm and launches a glass shard at Quincy in retaliation.  
Quincy's hit to the chest is shrugged off as Quincy just pulls it out and fires three streams of lasers at Sear.  
Sear's glass barrier attempts to block it, but then the plasma bolts fly behind Sear.  
"The wall is bordered by glass, no?" Quincy pointed out. "I wasn't really aiming for you."  
The plasma bolts hit the glass panel behind Sear and temporarily makes him unable to move because his Affinity was dented.  
Quincy takes his chance to land a decent combo on him before Sear jumps out of it.  
Sear then summons multiple glass barriers and attempts to push Quincy aside with them, hoping that he falls into one of the many holes in the ground.  
Quincy just uses his sword cards to break the glass.  
By the time he's even gotten close to Sear, he's already relocated to above the arena.  
Quincy charges up a spiked yoyo-like weapon to bash Sear with, BUT! Sear surrounds himself with glass shards and jabs Quincy with one before leaping off into the distance, getting hit by the yoyo on the way out. This breaks both of his legs.  
"Not too major of an injury, but he got me good." Quincy thought to himself. Reencountering Sear would be guaranteed, but differently from usual. He would relocate to a new secret place throughout time and space that once again contains no rules.

Protecting the order of many an intimate one was his only goal. He can't disappoint his higher power.

Earlier, Exciter had approached Sprite, now living with the very people he's allied with. He had re-introduced himself, but Sprite brought up something interesting.  
"We conducted some research on the boundaries of time and space and found a bend in the space-time continuum. An entirely different universe has been spotted within the dimensional confines. That universe has its own timeline, and it could very likely interfere with our own. Go ahead and scout it out. I'll give you the route to the Hexagon Foundation. Don't take any of the cards there, safe or not!" Sprite said to Exciter before opening up a portal there using his integrated Affinity, which allows him to open up gateways to other dimensions. Running about the place was a journey all on its own. He did manage to find the split in time Sprite was talking about, however. Before he took a closer look, however, he briefly went outside to get some fresh air. That's when he encountered the alien...

As Quincy and Eschaton were ready to leave the Hexagon Foundation, Exciter drifted off into another room entirely. One that looked all too familiar to Eschaton before as 6 red laser pointers aimed at him.  
"This doesn't look all that safe," Exciter said to himself. His appearance began to change, step by step. Eventually, his mind became affected by the rift in the continuum, and he took on another layer of godliness.

Meanwhile, Quincy's journey through said Hexagon Foundation now had him erasing all of the neutral-colored, red-bordered cards that stood in his way.

"If you want to divert yourself away from this madness in a stylish manner, just do what I do. First, you have to unwrap that Artifact to reveal its pure form. The process may involve copious amounts of hemoglobin leaking from the target, but it's guaranteed to release the enemy from it and allow you to erase it for good. This is what's required to avoid getting deleted yourself in this Foundation." Quincy's notes on how to erase the Foundation's Artifacts. Artifacts are the visual works of those who come and go from the Foundation that come in grey-bordered (safe) and red-bordered (explicit) variations. They are all over the walls of the establishments found throughout the Foundation. There are four in total, and one can warp to an establishment as they please. Eagle, Hawk, Falcon, and Condor. Those are the four. They're all massive fortresses that make up the Foundation, with the Main House in the middle. One tall skyscraper where the people in charge look over the different houses. This brings order to the universe of Artifacts.

Then, Quincy saw a brief vision of the room that Eschaton shoved out of the way.  
"That looks familiar," he said to himself as he followed the light to where that room was. Eschaton tried to close it, but he had already gone in.

"You have entered a world of complete and utter sorrow. Please continue further. We've awaited you since this whole thing got started, and we would not like for you to miss it again. Take 5 steps further."

Quincy does so, and the room breaks apart, revealing nothing but space.  
"Sign of Justice will augment your abilities, giving you more range over what you can do."  
This reveals Quincy's darker side, which summons a guardian next to him that significantly increases the power of his moves by attacking in tandem with him.  
"Movement 1 of your card system carried lackluster attack power. Try using them now."  
Indeed, Quincy's ice pillars became more prominent, and the plasma beams he was once capable of firing have turned into plasma streams. His enemies were the notorious Wave Busters, which was the "controversy" that Eschaton once brought up. These delinquents with claws for hands came in a pack of 5. Quincy cared not for their names, for he was only concerned about letting his powers rip.  
Quincy charges up a move as they approach.  
One of them attempts to swipe at him.  
Quincy just releases the mass of energy projectiles that bounce along the ground as they explode, launching them all back.  
They then stack themselves up into a tower, with the highest one up jumping at Quincy.  
Quincy just forms a long energy sword seemingly out of thin air and cuts the Buster in two. "No amount of blood on this battlefield can change the outcome," he said.  
The 2nd one on top also makes the jump, approaching him from a zig-zag movement.  
Quincy just has Sign of Justice grab the Buster, choking it.  
Quincy, by himself, just summons two glaciers from underneath the rest of the stack and finishes the combo by bifurcating all three with two pillars of light.  
"Are you done with this guy yet?" Quincy asked.  
All of a sudden, the space backdrop got significantly more intense, appearing to carry Quincy all the way through the entire universe and back. A very surreal and strange sequence plays out in front of Quincy, showing him everything he needs to see concerning the new reality, called the Radiant Sun. Suddenly, the mysterious figure appeared.  
"Let me take the pain away," it said. Father Pure, it called itself. It was the being that could control the flow of emotions and feelings. As such, it has significant control over the Radiance. Doing so, it heavily reconfigures Quincy's card system to have better control over Radiant powers. This unlocks movement 2.  
"I will correctly ensure you that nothing ever happens concerning this room ever again. Let it be the last thing that happens. As a result, reversing the Hexagon Foundation to remove restrictions set in place to avoid corrupting you is now forbidden. You've been doing it over and over again, thinking you'd be safe. I can't bear the thought of seeing someone getting erased by his own quota. I just can't."  
Father Pure said these words before sending Quincy away to the alleyway from whence he came.

Too bad the mystery of time and space is still out there...

Meanwhile, Father Pure encountered a mysterious facility in the strands of space and time. It appeared to be an empty tavern, but the polygonal aliens from last time surrounded it completely!  
"Well, if there's one thing I don't like about this place, it's the sheer amount of conflict I'm about to cause." Father Pure said to himself.  
His body covered entirely in light, he ran over to the tavern and kicked in the very first alien that he encountered.  
They tried lunging at him, but with every dodge and sidestep, Father Pure just couldn't bother to get hit.  
Meanwhile, Father Pure kicks one enemy into the wall, violently propels another into the ceiling, and slams yet another one into the ground.  
He then backflips out of the way of another.  
He then fires a beam of light at the last one in the room, ripping it apart vertically.  
When he cleared out the entire area, the tavern lit up and covered itself with lights! Within moments, a whole crowd gathered within the place, mostly men. Father Pure turned himself invisible and blended everything but his eyes into the background. Like a chameleon, sneaking through the area till he was outside, not a soul in sight.  
"Not getting spotted is the best part of my day. It feels fun knowing that people can live their lives without having to see a Higher Soul wander through a lively area." Father Pure thought.

The story of an artist's dilemma, Quincy enters a point of no return.

Quincy enters a house in another world. There, a sword is positioned blade down. It's bursting with energy like it wants someone to pick it up. When he went to grab it, a force as bright as heaven itself came over him, and his Radiant Deck had transferred itself over to the sword!  
"My cards... they're all gone, but I can still see the images engraved within their surfaces. Guess I don't need them!" Quincy thought to himself as he put the Everlasting Gallery away. He went forth and turned to the left. As he walked down the hallway, he turned left again and saw some floors that were descending altitude. There was also a window on the wall that only revealed a blue sky.  
"That can't be right. Where does this lead?" Quincy asked himself. This is a question that should have been left unanswered. Once he jumped down to the other platform, the white wall took on a clean appearance, as if you could draw on it.  
"Okay, sure, but where are the drawing supplies?" he asked.  
"You don't need any. Imagine yourself in front of a blank canvas, ready to perform a daring art you've never tried before. Instead of trying to draw anything, however, you merely imagine something that would go best with that canvas. Although movement 2 is still with you, you're not ready enough to use that sword. Here we enter... Final Discourse." Father Pure spoke with Quincy with the use of telepathy. Within seconds, Quincy absorbed everything he could possibly ask for. The space around him collapsed into an unending galactic cycle. Indeed, the universe surrounds him with the powers of someone almighty. Possessing increased reaction speeds, unreal power (because why attack physically when you have all of the Radiance?), and immunity to everything, Final Discourse is a work of the gods crafted for only the worthy.  
Quincy jumps out of that world and into Solution City, this time running on the skyscrapers. The Hexagon Foundation has blended into the city, and Quincy had to dodge everything being fired at him at once. However, the more he evaded the enemy attacks, the more he realized that he was NOT controlling his reaction speed.  
"Father Pure, what's going on here?!" Quincy yelled. Even his running was being taken over by Pure.

"Even though he's not controlling his reaction speed, he still doesn't feel anything when he does get hit. It's like his power high is so intense that the counter that we use for checking how many red-bordered cards he's been hit by froze entirely! Just how powerful is Final Discourse?" Eschaton comments.  
"If you really had to know, well... Final Discourse is a little more than a part of me. It's a mashup of all the beautiful things the Radiance is known for. None of the clutter associated with a pack of cards. Just those sweet old squares that we call Particle Affinities. All it takes is a snap and a point away, and once you're thinking about that Particle, its power is yours to keep. Imagine him running around slaying those polygonal menaces. It's going to be the best thing you've ever seen to date." Father Pure commented.

There's more in that room. Father Pure and Eschaton are merely testing Quincy. Better yet, there's another time period to explore!

Sprite enters a parallel dimension and meets up with another shadowy figure from the past. His location, Hyperspace, is blue and flashy. It appears to be an enormous battle arena surrounded by rails above and platforms all around the field. Sprite came there because he knew someone familiar was about to drop by to his side of the world border.  
"Figured you'd stop by." the figure said sarcastically.  
With his spear in hand summoned from thin air, he rushed towards Sprite.  
Sprite disappeared into the wall and showed up from beneath the ground.  
Sprite dragged the figure in and attempted to damage him.  
The figure merely kicked him upward and stabbed him once.  
Sprite, feeling at a disadvantage, tried to use the momentum to create another dimensional pocket.  
Reappearing back on the arena, the figure saw him coming and kicked him into the wall.  
"That's it. That's totally it." Sprite thought. He had taken on this guy because he was entirely on board with the plans of a person he called "The Reader."  
"Did you honestly think you'd halt our little movement? Transpiring throughout time and space is a gathering of every little important thing we've collected over the years... We're putting everyone in a state of unbridled joy through the force of Dominion. You heard it from The Reader's mouth." he said.

Meanwhile, Father Pure sends Quincy through a blue path along the road.  
"Once you run along this path, the world around you will flicker blue and red, the signs of a world being flipped back and forth. Don't worry about any changes, for they won't transpire. Sprite needs our help, and you will have to travel through time to confront our adversary in 2014. Have I told you about Reversals yet? They occur only in the Hexagon Foundation; when you perform one by clapping your hands twice in quick succession really hard, the world turns red, and the red-bordered cards will actually reveal their actual forms right away. This is incredibly risky to use, as it leaves you wide open for an ambush!" Father Pure explained.  
"If you have to worry about anything, it's not seeing me come back to Solution City," Quincy reassured. The whole "under attack" thing was a test from Father Pure to see how well Final Discourse worked.  
Quincy ran down the road, getting faster and faster with each step until eventually, the light flickering started. The time tunnel kept getting wider and wider. Then, it's pitch black.

Thrown into Hyperspace in the year 2014, Quincy sees nothing but flashy blue platforms and background, Sprite on the floor being stepped on by the enemy, and several pockets used to teleport.  
"Tell me, sir, why are you stepping on him, and what is it you're trying to achieve?" Quincy asked the new guy in his best British voice he could take on.  
"You wouldn't get it. It's called Dominion, and we're going to take the world over with it!" he said. "If you have to refer to me, it's Trail."  
"It's not your name I want, it's your motive." Quincy retorted.  
"Unbridled joy through the lively retreat of art!" Trail exclaimed.  
"Explicit nudity or tasteful? I know tons about both. There ain't nothing you can do about it." Quincy said while revealing Final Discourse.  
"You catch on fast. Let's see if you can catch on to this!" Trail said.  
He tried to punch, but Quincy backed away.  
A swipe of his spear was met with a ducking motion.  
Multiple jabs with his spear, Quincy was evading at speeds Trail had never seen before.  
"How are you moving so fast?!" Trail exclaimed as he kept swiping at Quincy with no success.  
"I don't know, it's not my reflexes!" he said.  
Quincy then retaliated by crouching and flip-kicking Trail's spear out of his hand. He then leaped up and caught it.  
"Now I have the upper hand," he said.  
Quincy then charged the spear with Radiance and threw it at Trail.  
Trail just grabs the spear and snaps it.  
"That was pretty easy. Wanna know what Dominion feels like?!" Trail shouted.  
Throwing Quincy into a portal, he sent him into various rooms filled with red-bordered cards. "These are the kinds of things The Reader gave me from the Hexagon Foundation! It is with these and so many more scattered across time and space that we can combine their forces and achieve 'Diagonal Unity.' In case you don't understand what that is, it's complete and utter perfection!" Trail shouted.  
Quincy jumped from peg to peg in the world of confusion and "unbridled joy." Lasers from the crystal embedded in the purple walls phase through him. They do nothing at all to his body or even his clothes. Even when he bounces on the red-bordered cards, they do nothing to him. He sees them in all their glory, but not a thing happens to him. He's not even using any but one of his Particle Affinities, which increases his precision!

"So this is the power of Dominion, huh? All I need to do is get out of here." Quincy remarked.  
As soon as he traveled out of there, Sprite was up wrestling a gun out of Trail's hands. Quincy had taken no damage at all, and that's the first thing both of them noticed when he got back.  
"Wow, that quickly?" they both questioned in unison. Then they went back to wrestling with the gun before Quincy just stomped the ground and produced a vibration hard enough to break their grasps. The weapon was sent flying, and Quincy caught it.  
He then fired it at Trail, buffing it with a Particle Affinity. Trail still catches the bullet.  
Trail then turned the bullet into a battle ax and charged at Quincy. Once again, every strike and swing was met with a dodge. When Trail aimed for the legs, Quincy flipped upward, landed behind Trail, and grabbed his neck. He then flung him backward with insane force, making him drop his ax in the process. He then fired the gun at Trail once and then threw it away.  
"I've spent enough time messing with you. I think it's time to end the cycle." Quincy said. With that, he briefly unfurled his wings while crossing his arms. "This is exactly what you're messing with, and this force is not a toy," Quincy said.  
The shockwave produced by the wings was large enough to knock Sprite back a bit and to completely erase Trail from existence. Hyperspace isn't affected, but Quincy feels more than a little tired out from the sheer amount of stamina required to perform such a move.  
"What did you do?!" Sprite asked just before they were whisked to the future.  
"Do...what? Domi...?" Quincy said before the time warp occurred.

Somewhere else, Father Pure had hoped that he could successfully combine the Dominion forces with that of the Radiance. In doing so, his experiment summoned a massive being that thrived on both and caused enormous havoc in the process. Even Father Pure was thrown back at how far he had gone. All he wanted to do was perform an extraordinary test. Besides, he also wanted to see what Quincy was capable of when he underwent the same effects. This being, Dominion Pure, traveled to the skies upon being summoned and proceeded to harvest a vast amount of Radiance and Dominion power. The best of both worlds, it wanted. Father Pure stepped out of his lab and saw to his horror that Quincy and Sprite had returned. They were positioned right under the beast!  
Quincy felt a strong feeling radiating under him, but he wasn't sure if it was Radiance or Dominion. He knew he was immune to both due to the wing effect he did back in the time field. However, Father Pure decided to perform another test. This time, he took off Final Discourse from Quincy! Quincy didn't feel much when his power disappeared. Father Pure gaped in shock and confusion; Quincy was so used to Final Discourse and the constant amount of dodging around with it that almost all of his abilities stayed with him! Movement 2 was given a small upgrade "Final Division." The only thing Final Division takes away is complete and utter invulnerability, but with Quincy's advanced reflexes that he grew into, he doesn't need it! With that, Quincy sees Father Pure's failed project above and decides to rush after it. "Absolutely no-one can follow me up there. This thing was summoned for a reason, and that's to end a 7-year cycle! Once this is gone, the war will be cut in half!" Quincy said before jumping up there.  
Quincy got stronger the longer he stayed up there. Dominion and Radiance surrounded him, giving him a perfect influx of both to use to strengthen himself. However, it was not enough. Since he figured out how to directly harvest both energies from Dominion Pure itself from his fingers, he did so to every wall he could find. He also tested his newfound strength on every enemy he encountered. He would throw them aside, cut their heads off with one swipe, kick them around with enough force to launch them, and even surround the arena in a bloody mess due to the explosive power of Everlasting Gallery. Indeed, he was a force to be reckoned with.  
Just before he encountered Dominion Natural, which is the core of Dominion Pure, he grew differently colored wings than usual. They were translucent, but they worked. He flew up high, beyond the heaven-like skies that formed Dominion Pure's insides. The sphere that could end the world was right there, waiting for him. Speechless, yet monstrous. It turned into an angel and prepared to fight Quincy through the open skies of Dominion Pure.  
Each and every strike confirmed that the two were on par with each other.  
Quincy's sword and brute strength were both strong enough to gradually crack Natural's sword.  
Natural fired a current of Dominion force at Quincy, but his god-like reaction time saved him.  
In response, Quincy tossed a saw blade-shaped Particle Affinity made of Dominion energy at Natural. It tried to deflect it, but its sword broke instead.  
Quincy then fired two waves of Radiant energy at Natural. It flew away and doubled down on the Dominion firepower.  
Quincy's reaction time was top-notch here as he made an effort to dodge every single blast. One of the projectiles DID hit his leg, though.  
"This is the first time anyone has harmed me ever since I got Final Discourse," Quincy remarked. The scar didn't hurt much because he protected himself beforehand with a defense buff. "Particle Affinities get the job done."  
Quincy just decided to get it over with and fly to Natural, grabbing it by the body.  
He flew downwards at an alarming rate while charging his hand up with energy from both sides. With a powerful shockwave, Dominion Pure started vanishing.  
"I'm not done yet!" Quincy said. He then proceeded to take in all of the Radiance and Dominion that Dominion Pure let out. Just when it vanished for good, Quincy was hovering there, not affected by anything.

"What has he become now?!" Father Pure exclaimed.  
He had become precisely what he expected. Quincy was now in a league of his own. Movement 2 upgraded to Movement 3 as he and Final Division became one, giving him powers like no-one has ever seen before. All of his Particle Affinities were upgraded, and lots more were added to the Everlasting Gallery!

"Why would you do this?" Quincy asked.

"It was just a test. I wanted to see how well these power sources would flow together! Maybe just in small amounts..." Father Pure replied.

Quincy looks to his side after waking up from sleep in Father Pure's place, which he was put in after some of his powers were taken from him. The only thing he had left was his crazy reaction speed. On his left was a blue, translucent arrow. On the right of that was a note telling him to "imbue yourself with the arrow." Quincy refused and went outside for a jog.  
Along the way, he met someone who he'd never thought he see before. "You shouldn't be here, you were only present in Dominion Pure, but then I killed you!" Quincy remarked. The creature, who was a quite familiar yellow fox with purple markings, had a right hand resembling a giraffe's head that could fire projectiles. Quincy ran over and tried to strike it, but none of his sword strikes actually harmed it. He then tried a move that he had learned when he progressed to movement 3.  
A silhouette of Krystal appeared behind him, outlined in blue. "My new Affinity, Conjuration, allows me to summon a variety of familiar characters across so many different worlds and universes. I cherry-picked the best ones to fight with." Quincy explained.  
Still, her staff did minuscule damage to this new threat. Outnumbered and outmaneuvered, Quincy stepped back more and more with each advance the enemy made. But what's enough is enough, so before she fired her cannon, Quincy "imbued" himself with the arrow, causing a shockwave massive enough to knock the enemy flat on its back.

Quincy was then taken to a church-like area called Heaven's Door, as the note said once he got there.  
"Yep, sounds cult-ish to me," Quincy remarked to himself. Just when it couldn't get any more suspicious to him, a guy dressed in a robe approached him. Quincy tried to pass the arrow to him, thinking it's his, but the guy said: "Keep it. It's going to be your entrance to here from the outside world from now on. Follow me, I have something to show you."  
Quincy followed him to a wall that has blue outlines on it. They were quite mystical and mysterious. "Step on that tile in front of the wall. What this will do is grant you an ever-changing guardian. Reliable, sentient, and fast. The reason why I sent you here is that all that Dominion energy you absorbed had caused a life-changing event inside of you; it was slowly damaging your very soul! I'm granting you the ability to use Heaven's Eye." he said. "I'm the Gatekeeper. Remember that."

Once the process was completed through the usage of 4 electrical currents, Quincy suddenly leaped up, gained a boost through the Gatekeeper's shoulders, and kicked a Dominion Peon square in the face, releasing it from its card. Quincy then ran over and struck it 4 times with the Everlasting Gallery. Once it vanished, Quincy put the sword away.

Quincy went back outside and confronted the creature, this time with Heaven's Eye by his side. A quite literal knight in slim, shining armor, it dismantled the enemy in three hits.  
On the other side of Solution City was a blue, Dominion-fueled station called Dominion's Conduit. Residing in it was Dangle, who looked quite similar to the animal that Heaven's Eye destroyed. He took several Affinities (we would call these "images") and connected them together by strands of energy. Dominion's Web was a part of an on-going experiment by the Reader that, if enacted, could change - and take control - of parts of the entire world, not just Solution City. Quincy went to Dangle's room and, upon listening in on his plan to support The Reader, Conjured a silhouetted fox wearing a tie to maul him with. Even though he blocked the attack, Quincy already knew what to do. He threw an explosive tag at Dangle and called back the fox. By the time Dangle struggled to get it off of him, the Particle Affinity had blown up in his face, leaving him as nothing more than a body. The Conduit went with him, propelling Quincy back so far that he warped to the year 2015.  
A hillside covered in Radiance, Cuteness Valley housed only one individual. Solar descended from seemingly nowhere. He anticipated Quincy's arrival ahead of time and clarified that he was not the enemy. He knew about the Reader's scheme to merge four periods of time together - which he did - and harvest multitudes of Dominion forces together to craft his own army and massively boost Sector 4 of the House of Dominion in 2016. Doing this means that he has a sure shot at bending Solution City to his will. Quincy asked if Solar could join him. Agreeing to this, Solar and Quincy went back to 2020 through Heaven's Eye. The Gatekeeper, Eschaton, Sprite, and Father Pure were waiting for all three of them to come back. They were already standing there when they returned.

Meanwhile, a team of three bikers assembled in a desert. Their names were Midway, a beaver, Speeder, a squirrel, and Jack, a jackal. Their objective was to crop Dominion Affinities to make them more suitable for the Radiance. It seems simple enough, but their tasks get harder and harder by the moment. They all share Quincy's ability to stare directly at a Dominion Affinity and not even get touched, which is vital for the process. Their bikes were state-of-the-art technology, being sleek, futuristic motorbikes that were different colors depending on who's driving it. Midway's is gray, Speeder's is blue, and Jack's is green.  
To crop the Affinity, the one doing the job has to use a pencil to erase the bits they don't want. All three of them are under orders from Midway to know which ones to take and which ones they don't. But their journey came to a halt after recovering 9 Twin Balance Affinities. Midway saw a cliff in the distance.  
"Jack, go right, Speeder, go left. I'll take this on myself." Midway said to them both. As they did so, Midway deliberately stopped his bike. He put it on Neutral gear, then pushed the gas pedal in an attempt to overclock the engines. One he did so, he exited the bike as he put it on Drive.  
The bike went so fast that Midway had one second to see the bike for the last time before it crashed into a rock blocking the cliff. From it, revealing a portal to another world.  
"I think I found our real destination. Let's bring these over there, okay?" Midway said to his two brothers before realizing that they weren't anywhere in sight. Even though he had his radio with him, they still wouldn't respond. Midway got worried, so he went in there by himself.  
Quincy was taking a walk down the city, with all sorts of cars and passerby, well, passing him by. The portal from earlier appeared on top of a skyscraper, Heaven's Eye warning him about the new person. Teleporting Quincy on top of the building, Midway introduced himself.  
"Hello there, my name is Midway. I brought some gifts for you, but you have to promise me something," he said.  
"Which is?" Quincy pondered.  
"Since I brought these items from a place you might have been before, I want you to best me in combat." Midway explained. "Simple rules, knock me down."  
Meanwhile, a motorbike was running its engines below the tower's rooftops.  
Quincy was about to use Everlasting Gallery, but Heaven's Eye stepped in for him. "That sword is conducive to his 'gifts.' You might want to let me deal with this guy." Heaven's Eye said.  
Heaven's Eye stepped forward and clashed swords with Midway. Every stroke of each other's swords connected. They neither missed once nor twice. It came to a head when Quincy slid down the tower and chased after the motorbike speeding down the road recklessly. When he got close to the wreckage, none other than Speeder jumped out of it, armed with a more powerful sword than Midway did. This time, he did not hold back with his strikes. Quincy had no choice but to duel him with his own sword. They clashed swords until Everlasting Gallery sent them into an angelic-looking arena that was topped with thousands of stars. Speeder summoned an army of four hooded figures using the Dominion web technique that Dangle tried all that time ago. Quincy followed that up with a Particle Affinity.  
It split into six. Six brown anthropomorphic critters (rabbits? who knows?) were summoned into the field, all dancing on an indefinite loop.  
"Two can play that game," Quincy said. "You can't stop me."  
The Radiance emitted from all six entered his gun, which he hasn't used until now. He fired it just once, piercing the Radiant barrier that his group had made. Once the bullet hit Speeder, his entire body expanded and burst like a balloon. It was not a pretty sight, but at least the Particles were called back just before he exploded.  
Meanwhile, Heaven's Eye, which evolved into Phase 2, was duking it out with Midway inside of a tornado. Taking on a samurai-like appearance, every hit it dealt hurt Midway a ton. Still refusing to be knocked down, Midway eventually stepped forward, holding his blade in front of him. Heaven's Eye just warped them both to the Divine Sanctum, which is the gateway to a place that is heaven-like but not quite there. Contrary to both of their expectations, Jack had beat them both to it using his bike. It was equipped with technology that The Reader developed. It gave Jack the chance to guard the Divine Crossroads.

A man devoted to his cropping jobs, Jack directly traveled to the Divine Sanctum in an attempt to find more Affinities to crop. This is despite a direct order from Midway not to go anywhere farther than where he was. This is a safety measure to ensure that every member of his group made it out of every mission alive. However, Jack disobeyed this command willingly to fuel his own potential for an ability he developed separately from the group: to control Dominion Affinities uncropped!  
Jack went on a spree of gathering different Affinities from the air around him, for the Sanctum gave him everything he might have wanted. He wanted to be unstoppable. The stars around the field glowed magnificently as he did so, giving him a bit of a power high.  
The Gatekeeper was also there, staring in horror. "Did you have to travel here just to get what you wanted?" he asked.  
"You said it yourself. Ascending is purely dependent on one's desire. I got here because I wanted to obtain the best feeling possible. And now that I've stacked the game in my favor...."

He took this with him as he traveled to the gate of the Divine Crossroads. There stood Midway and Heaven's Eye, who stopped their battle when Jack arrived on the scene.  
"Jack, I don't know why you let the promise of all of these Affinities get to your head. We were supposed to purify them, and here you come taking them all in their natural state. I can even tell you're undergoing a power high! What do you plan to do with that power of yours?" Midway said.  
"Absolutely nothing." Father Pure said upon warping to the Divine Sanctum. "He believes in the Dominion like it's a religion now. I believe it's time to balance those two powers out."  
Father Pure weaponized every power that he took from Quincy that he could, starting with the Particle Affinities. He summoned three of them and had them circle around him.  
Jack turned one of his Dominion Affinities into a sword to directly fight Father Pure with. Pure dodged every hit, replying with melee strikes.  
Jack, not flinching to this, flip kicked Pure high up in the air, following it up with over a dozen needles.  
Pure got up from this attack and rushed at Jack, surrounding himself with sawblades.  
Meanwhile, in the confusion of the battle, Quincy snuck up from behind Heaven's Eye (he made it to the Divine Sanctum through Eschaton, who is not present in the Sanctum) and jabbed him with the arrow, making it vanish.  
Heaven's Eye then grew wings and had his sword upgrade to a laser sword. He flew upwards and grabbed Jack.  
Heaven's Eye, now on Phase 3, could actually go to the Divine Crossroads. He warped Quincy there and threw Jack past the door.  
Jack reappeared in the ethereal roads and saw Quincy there, now holding Heaven's Eye's laser sword. Preemptively, Quincy summoned a silhouetted bunny cop who was resized up to Quincy's height to make it more equal.  
"Midway gave his little gifts to you before you showed up to fight me, didn't he?" Jack said.  
"I don't know what gifts you're speaking of, but I did bring quite a few companions with me. No, wait. Make that a LOT of companions." Quincy replied. His Conjurations had limits: depending on the character, it took away different segments of Quincy's meter, which was represented by a circle-shaped bar on Quincy's right hand. It was 3 for now, but he can add more bars to this meter over time.  
"The only thing upsetting this balance right now is you, and there's only one way to reset the scales again; to put a cap on the Dominion you're using. It's quite overbearing on the world."  
Jack, upon hearing this, unleashed 4 of his Affinities and launched them at Quincy.  
The rabbit jumped up and kicked it away, it blowing up once it hits the ground far away from Jack.  
She then ran towards Jack and attempted to best him in hand-to-hand combat. Once she tried to kick him, though, Jack grabbed her leg and slung her across the field, putting her out of commission.  
"Well, there goes two of my bars of Conjurations right there." Quincy lamented before rushing towards Jack. He delivered a 6-hit combo of dashing strikes at him, then kicked him up in the air.  
Jack tries to regain his composure, but Heaven's Eye imbues its overwhelming power into Quincy, and that's when Quincy speed-blitzed some more hits into Jack, then stabbed him with his laser sword and flung him far away.  
Jack, in a lot of pain but still alive, got up and charged up for an attack. Heaven's Eye moved Quincy away from the air and on the ground.  
Jack then launched his Eight Naughty Words, a series of sparks that fly around and home into their targets.  
Quincy deflected them all with his sword, then waited for Jack to launch something else, given how he's still charging.  
Jack then launched a beam of light from his palm that even demolished the lamps lighting the roads when it swept to meet Quincy's side.  
Quincy flew up and activated two more of his Particles: a portal that shot tiny light beams that distracted Jack from the main attraction; Quincy teleporting to his side.  
Thus, Quincy delivered 8 more hits using his sword, but not before Jack stabbed him with an arm pumped full of Dominion.  
"Did you forget? I don't flinch to whatever hits me! You're not the first one to try and bypass that strong point, are you?" Jack says to Quincy.  
Out of the blue, Solar rushes in and grabs Jack, then flips twice in the air and slams Jack on the ground. This releases Quincy from Jack's grasp.  
While Jack was getting up, both Quincy and Solar were standing over him, holding their own weapons (Solar wields an interchangeable sword that can add or remove bits and pieces to it to modify it.)  
"How'd you get here?" Jack questioned.  
"Simple. Heaven's Eye had me on speed dial. Contrary to my name, I have a little surprise for you." Solar responded. "Since you're immune to flinching..."  
Solar and Quincy grab Jack and inject his neck with the entirety of all the Radiance stored in the Everlasting Gallery. This includes Solar's own Radiance, which he has stored within himself from years of living in the Cuteness Valley. "A land entirely of pink will do that to you," Solar says.  
Even though Solar warped Jack to the confines of Cuteness Valley's underground (where the Radiance is most influential), Jack is seen in the Crossroads violently disintegrating, all of the once-clear Affinities turning blue as he did so.  
"That's a LOT of blood. Exactly how many Affinities was he keeping in himself?" Quincy said. He was coated in blue as he said this.  
"I won't bother to count, but the Reader's forces have gone down a lot ever since I warped Jack to a different time. Now, all we need to do is investigate the road to his current field: the House of Dominion. He squeezed 2013 and 2016 into one zone and filled them both up with Dominion. That is where his power is most influential. Rally the allies up, we're about to travel to our last stop." Solar explained.

1 hour later

"Great, nobody died!" Father Pure said.  
"How exactly do we travel to this "House of Dominion"?" Midway asked.  
"We have to go back into the Hexagon Foundation and flip it. Then, Quincy will open up the gate to the next zone and let us all in. Then we find The Reader through his impressive maze. His forces are many, and his rooms are PACKED. We don't exactly know how big of a problem this is going to be for us, but once we figure it out, we will clear Solution City of any worries." Eschaton said.  
They were all planning for the rush to The Reader's House of Dominion inside Father Pure's lab, which is the entry point for the Hexagon Foundation. Quincy knew this from constant back-and-forths through the place. If he didn't see that world through his eyes, he would occasionally use another person's eyes and take a gander at the things they do. Quincy used this technique to know about the biker group's existence. That's also how he knew that Speeder was about to show up.

Either way, there was a new and significant task at hand.

The crew enters the Hexagon Foundation through Eschaton's portal and have Quincy unlock the gate by flipping the place until its red. Quincy switches the color scheme with a snap of his fingers and has everyone go inside. Then, when everyone has already entered...  
"Have you entered my place... intending to pursue it?"  
Quincy felt himself enter a new location, one that he doesn't even recall knowing exists. The entire crew look back and notice their leader missing from the team. "Where'd he go?!" Eschaton exclaimed.  
It's not known where he went, but none other than The Reader was there. He knew that Quincy was about to head to his place with his crew, so that's why he whisked him off.   
"You know, in another universe, I met this fancy plant-user... she so solidly beat me senseless until I ran in fear, not knowing what her plans were next. Those roots are so sharp, so jagged. Alright, change of topic. You're not like her. I went to her. You went to me. What do you want from me again - to balance the world's powers? Oh, it's too late. Everyone's already hooked on this thing, and the Dominion's influence flows to their heads every time. I know how to command an army. I have stacked the game in my favor ever since I read through everything that you guys have done. Every last one of my remaining troops has died due to your efforts. That's why I went to you when you went for me." The Reader said in the comfort of a misty, Dominion-filled room. Quincy couldn't even touch him up there - he was too far away AND intangible.  
"I'll give you a final test. Think you can endure this one?" The Reader said while throwing Quincy in a dark room containing 100 of the geometric humanoid aliens that Exciter last fought.  
Heaven's Eye was ready for this, so it appeared, flew high up in the air, and cast lightning potent enough to shatter trees.   
Every alien in the room vanished in a heartbeat, their shattered parts filling the room. "If I can defeat this new army this fast, then surely the commander must have a weakness somewhere, too!" Heaven's Eye said while returning to Quincy's side.  
Quincy, warping back to the dim room, ran past The Reader and made it to another place. A dark treasure chest walled by a new type of energy stood there, and The Reader teleported right to it.  
"I have made contact with forces out of anyone's control. Solution City knows not of this new energy. When I combine three of the most potent Dominion Affinities - Strength, Willpower, and Assertion - I will become the strongest individual anyone has ever known!" The Reader said.  
With that, he opened the chest, infusing himself with these foreign forces.  
He was right. Nothing that anyone could do to him lasted. When the ring surrounded The Reader, the integrated mind of another reality warper, Starchaser, entered him. The Reader flew off to find the rest of Quincy's crew.

"I have no weakness." The Reader said to them all when he descended from the air in front of his castle's courtyard, where everyone else was.  
Everyone stopped to notice him.  
"Now that I have the three superpowers of the world, combined with the influence of the Outer Forces, I have the entire world in my hands." The Reader explained. "The Denizen wasn't able to take these from me. Encore was a mere test; I was downright able to--"  
"Speak no more. We all know where this is going, so hold your breath." Midway retorted.  
While this was going on, Quincy pulled out his gun and fired at the wall. The Reader tried to catch it, but his hand missed.   
"I wasn't even aiming for you," Quincy said. "The large walls that make up the boundary of the courtyard glow in your colors. Thus, I just had to make sure it wasn't the thing keeping you alive."  
"And why would you--" The Reader said just before the bullet hit the wall, denting The Reader's mind.  
"Everyone, fall back!" Quincy warned everyone as Sprite made a portal to Solution City. Everyone indeed fell back and returned to the roof of Father Pure's lab. Meanwhile, The Reader let off a massive burst of energy to patch up the cracked wall. "That will put me off for the rest of the week," The Reader said under his breath.

Quincy obtained some more intel from Eschaton 15 minutes after that moment. There are eight different versions of The Reader scattered across Solution City. Each one has a different set of powers, like Donatello, who mainly fights with fists, knives, and summoning trains. This Quincy found out once he made it downtown and encountered him. The journey across separate realities was a real mess, considering that landing in the limbo between realities meant instant death.  
Once Donatello was defeated by having his own train destroy his entire body, Quincy saw five polygonal aliens flying across the sky raining gunfire on another set, which were blue.  
"Why are The Reader's own forces attacking each other?" Quincy pondered as he went back to regroup with Eschaton and The Gatekeeper.

The group had split up to target various foes scattered throughout the city. The next opponent was the ruthless Leonardo, who weaponized six strings that function as sturdy ropes, able to swing from place to place and grab opponents. Most importantly - and his favorite thing to do - he can infect his opponents with a deadly parasite that eats away at the organs. Of course, he does this when he's not ripping people apart. His mere presence unsettles Quincy when he arrives there. So much so that Quincy chooses to fight from afar, using his gun to try and pick off his veins. However, Leonardo's threads are way too fast to quite cut off from this distance, so Quincy opts to get closer.  
Even though Leo can see him coming, he didn't know about Quincy's laser sword, the upgraded version of Everlasting Gallery. A sword that can cut through most solids, that is. Leo tried his best to back away and stab him with the ropes, but Quincy would just cut them down with every strike of his sword. That's when Eschaton appeared from above the skyscraper they were fighting on and said, "Thank you for handling my light work!" only for Leo to cast dark lightning from his veins and take him down. He was fine, but Quincy's nerves weren't. He instinctively summoned a small panda with a staff who often acts older than she is. Quincy picked her up and threw her at extreme forces. Thankfully, Leo caught her.  
But that wasn't enough, for Quincy quickly rushed forward and cut Leo in half. When his torso hit the ground below the heights, his blood painted a large radius around it.

"I have an excellent idea, let's find the next person on our hit list!" the panda said.  
"Yep. The next one is a little somebody named Diego. I heard he loves to play tricks." Quincy replied. 

"Those Affinities you have there... Don't you get tired of looking at them and playing around with them in your head? Don't you wish you could get more? Who knows how long you'll have them before you get tired of them and have nothing left?"

These are the words of Dream Warrior Diego. Part of the method of defeating him was to enter the dream world and follow him around. His first stop was at an airport, where he casually sat on the roof, too high for an average person to reach. Thankfully, Quincy was anything but ordinary, so he had Heaven's Eye go up there and fight him. Diego saw this coming, so he whipped up a massive tornado and had Heaven's Eye fight him up there. Diego's combination of laser attacks and melee attacks DID keep Heaven's Eye at bay, and it only got worse as Diego started flying, just like Heaven's Eye can. Quincy snuck himself inside the tornado dimension and summoned that panda from earlier. She leaped up and grabbed Diego, dragging him to the ground. Heaven's Eye retreated to Quincy as the panda threw her staff for a multi-hit combo as it returned, continued it with a chain of strikes going in midair, then launched him back down again to knock him down.   
While Diego did get up to summon a clone of the panda and make the two fight, Quincy retaliated with a quick dash of his sword, cleaving Diego in two.  
But the clone didn't vanish.

The two pandas kept parrying each other's hits with their staves. However, Quincy's decided to try some long-range methods. She threw the stave, had it return, then kicked the other one upwards and used a powerful fire-based projectile called Magic Bolt (not actually magic). The opponent flew back at an insane distance. Quincy closed the gap by kicking the clone back at the panda, which led her to the Magic Execution, an iron maiden that vanishes when the opponent falls inside it. It's like they never existed. Of course, this is not the only form of Magic Execution.  
With the clone gone, the two dreamers exit that world and return to their most perilous journey yet - division.

Quincy took a walk around Solution City and just noticed the facility for the Artists' Guild. Hanging on the side of the building was a poster depicting one of their members, a fox wearing a blue shirt.  
"You know, if I could draw like this, I could start my own fundraiser," Quincy said to himself just before a light-based individual shot out of there and rushed at Quincy. He dodged the bolt of light and cut it with his sword. The culprit, Pisanello, fell out of the flash of light and tumbled on the ground with a gaping scar where his side should be. "What's your deal?" Quincy said as he pointed his sword at Pisanello.   
"I saw you stare at that photo and thought you got jealous," he responded.  
"Nah, I got inspired," Quincy replied.  
"Well, ain't that something. You should try expanding your range of emotions! Show me that fear!" Pisanello said while brandishing his gun. It shot out a bolt of light that Quincy casually evaded. "I wasn't aiming for you," Pisanello said.  
The light bullet opened up a portal that unveiled a much bigger beam of light that swept the ground. Quincy barely evaded it and brought out Heaven's Eye, who rushed at Pisanello faster than he could react and cut him in the chest. Pisanello, not fazed by this at all, grabbed Heaven's Eye and threw him at the light portal.  
Quincy had three seconds to react to this, so he instinctively brandished a pencil and threw it at Pisanello backhanded. "This is a technique all artists have to remember. A smart defense strategy for those who can't fight. Another addition to an impressive arsenal for those who can!" Quincy said before the pencil stabbed Pisanello. Paint covered his entire body before he exploded in a splash of colors. Only his hoodie, shoes, and earphones were left behind. Quincy was about to walk off and call it a day, but then Pisanello transformed into a flash of light and approached the guy.   
"I'll let you in on a secret The Reader gave me. This city kind of looks familiar to you, right? The twisty tower, the towering buildings; Doesn't it ring a bell? This city is an alternate version of a place you already know. In 2016, Solution City began construction underneath Zootopia. Don't you remember that? The Artists' Guild knows this well; That's why when you go inside, there are all sorts of art for that city hanging everywhere. Praised be the artists that craft this sort of thing. They indeed make fundraisers for their efforts!" Pisanello explained.  
"Are you going to make me carry this to the grave?" Quincy questioned.  
"How'd you know what my next line was?" Pisanello said worryingly.  
"Because a bolt of light is absurdly powerful. A single flash of lightning can decimate stone. I don't want you causing havoc anywhere in this area." Quincy said before brandishing Heaven's Eye so fast that Pisanello had no time to react before perishing in a burst of light. Nothing was remaining of him at all except for his clothes and the paint left behind by Artist's Dilemma, the pencil that Quincy threw at him. "You failed the first test, and that was reaction speed." he commented.

Meanwhile...

"Listen, buddy. Stuff like this takes time! Now just wait till I--" The Reader said to his cohort just before a mosquito-like stinger stabbed him in the shoulder, dragging him to the roof of his castle.   
"How'd you get here?" The Reader said.  
The culprit identified herself as a girl from another world, Winston.  
"Your timeline's got holes in it, so I took a visit here. I want to know something about those Polygons." Winston asked.  
"Oh, you mean my refugees from the other world? I don't know why they were fighting each other, either. I was about to summon more blue ones until you came in." The Reader replied.  
"Yeah, I'll make you reconsider that fast," Winston said, preparing her psychic powers. A feline with tenacity she may be, but even she feels outmatched by The Reader's sheer power.  
Even if he's down by three units of power, she feels like she can't hold a candle. She's still determined, however.

Two days later, Quincy returns to Father Pure's lab. Nothing is the way it should be; everything is in a state of disarray, and words display on the walls, written in a blue substance: "Follow that trail."  
Quincy does, and on his way to Father Pure's studying room, two masked individuals made out of Dominion reveal themselves to Quincy, flipping from behind the walls. Father Pure is behind them, unable to move an inch.   
"They're too powerful!" Father Pure said.  
Quincy prepared his sword, this time infused with Radiance.   
The Dominion ninjas flipped towards each other, becoming one being.  
"Is this just one of The Reader's parts? Or is it actually two?" Quincy asked himself.  
The ninja approached Quincy and tried to stab him.  
Quincy had Heaven's Eye block the sword while he jumped behind the ninja.  
Boosting his strike with the help of the panda from earlier, Quincy prepares a massive horizontal attack.   
The ninja splits into two before the attack can connect, and they both rush at Quincy faster than he could think.  
He prepares a blocking stance as the fox wearing a tie appeared in front of him and uppercut the ninjas.  
"I thought for sure that the bunny would show up! Whatever, I'll pick my battles." Quincy thought.  
He then had the fox attempt a dropkick on one of the ninjas, but it grabbed his legs and threw him backward. Quincy isn't hurt, but it does take a bar off of his Conjuration Gauge.  
Quincy responds to this by summoning a Particle Affinity, which floats in the air.  
He leaps on top of the table and fires it.  
Once the floating square fires a proximity mine, it explodes on contact with one of the ninjas.  
Severely wounded, it can no longer fuse with the other ninja, prompting Quincy to Conjure a raccoon wielding a hook-shaped staff.   
The ninja and the raccoon trade blows with each other with their weapons.  
The raccoon, however, stuns the ninja by spinning his staff around and stabbing the ninja in the heart.  
Both Dominion Ninjas defeated, Quincy takes back his Conjuration and examines Father Pure more closely. He's not too badly wounded, but he did have this to say.  
"The Reader has already gone to four different Dominion conduits. The one Dangle was in was a test. The Reader wanted to make sure he knew what it felt to be in one of those areas. Thus, he chased after the other ones and grew stronger. He is trying to break his limits." Father Pure said after getting up and tidying up around the desk.  
"What can I do about this?" Quincy asked.  
"There are still three more Reader Units left to defeat. I'll journey with you." Father Pure said.   
Then Midway came in through the window that Father Pure sits behind.   
"There are large beams of light in Solution City. Big, blue rays of light. I don't know where they came from, but I have a feeling that we're in the middle of an invasion."  
"We have been for years, lighten up." Father Pure remarked.  
"We should investigate them!" Quincy suggested.

And that they did. The three heroes exit Father Pure's lab and go walking towards the closest one to them, which was a little bit away from the Artists' Guild.

The big blue beam responded to Quincy's presence.  
"Two days passed while you were still walking around. That was me. My name is Chopin. I skipped time while you journeyed through Solution City. That is not my ability, however! Walk into the blue beam, and find out who I am!"

Chopin is a Boston Terrier who specializes in distracting his enemies with Affinities that he implants in their minds. His expert fighting ability ensures his total victory over weak-minded people. This fact was proven when Quincy went up to the battlefield and ran into Chopin's stun attack. Chopin charged at him, but Quincy had preemptively summoned a different raccoon, this time carrying more guns than anyone else in Solution City had. This raccoon fired away at Chopin, kicking him away to throw bombs at him. Before he could detonate them, Chopin got up and asked The Reader to "let [Chopin] borrow [The Reader's] power..."  
Midway tried to show up and intervene, but Chopin's power of "Manzoku" (Japanese: "satisfaction") got in the way and blocked Midway from approaching Quincy.  
"When the locations we journey to shift past the museum, I will have the power to rule the world. Do you understand me?" Chopin explained.  
"Keep talking," Quincy remarked.  
They both pulled out their swords, and although Chopin's broke when Quincy cut it with his sword, Chopin still used his powers to keep up with Quincy.  
The two fought intensely as the background changed from space to a library to a museum.   
"Now, I shall merge with the Six Genres to become a being on par with The Reader himself!" Chopin said as he fired his Radiant Dominion Affinity at Quincy. It reflected itself off of the glass walls and went for Quincy. However...  
"Please, I take in this stuff for kicks! See, got a few of 'em right here!" Quincy said as he pointed his finger at Chopin, reflecting the Affinity at him. Chopin, hanging in the air, is stunned.  
Quincy kicks off the glass wall and runs on the other one, uppercutting Chopin until he splits in half. The Manzoku leaves him and returns to The Reader. Meanwhile, Quincy himself returns to Solution City and runs after the next sky beam.

The Reader, meanwhile, was using the Six Genres - Manzoku, Anshin, Tosui, Kofuku, Kakusei, and Naguisame - to fight Winston, who was nearing defeat. He had fired three of his Magic Shaders at her, which are pointy arrows that pierce the soul itself. Then he launched her in the distance with a Dominion Affinity.  
"I forgot to put up a "No Trespassing" sign on my castle. Either way, you have given me an idea." The Reader said to Winston.  
"And now that Chopin's gone, Manzoku has returned to me. This way, I can finally achieve what I've been looking for! This new stage is "Maximum Euphoria"!" The Reader says to himself. He retreats inside his base and begins work on the new phase of his abilities.

Midway chose to stay inside the sky beam that he entered before Chopin was defeated. As a result, every sky beam in the vicinity disappears, leaving only the path to The Reader's castle. It hadn't even revealed itself yet. Only one German Shepherd was standing in the new desert. His name was Beethoven. A master of Affinity manipulation, nobody has survived the extreme tests of the desert he resides inside.  
Midway has several solutions to this.  
First, he stalls Beethoven enough by rushing at him, sword drawn. The two had a rather tense fight, swiping here and there. The two made banter while they were at it.  
"You won't last long around these parts. The Reader gave me a nice opportunity here!" Beethoven said.  
"Bet on it. I've learned a few new tricks while on my way here!" Midway said.  
"What do you mean?" Beethoven asked.  
Midway then stepped back and took in lots of energy. LOTS of energy. Enough to have something like Heaven's Eye appear behind him, an angelic, metallic guardian that wielded a sword. Beethoven was genuinely concerned, yet awed at its brilliance. Then Midway said, "I need your aid, kind being. Open yourself up to me, and lend me your power!" as he reached out and grabbed a lion cub that had a tear in the sensitive area. She was still leaking from that area, but he managed to fuse the guardian with her. This act brought him to an elevated state of power.   
"I feel like a god now... Where are all these Affinities coming from?!" Midway said to himself. Beethoven, for some reason, was utterly terrified of Midway's new appearance. He steadily moved backward, fearing for his life. "It ain't over yet, is it?" Midway said. Beethoven was speechless, having witnessed someone contact the Outer Forces for help. The desert changed shape, morphing into a grid filled with grotesque, deformed Affinities that depicted absolutely vile events. "So I see. The lion cub originated here..." Midway and The Reader said in unison.   
Reading from a book, The Reader got excited and read more.   
"From where no man dared to travel, the wanderer stood tall against the coward, lying there. The guardian had wings of gold, a fearless sword, and a look of determination. The wanderer, without fail, cut the coward in half with brutal intent against a glowing, ethereal blade, and used the sparkling jewels around him to impale the coward seventy times over, spilling his blood all over the battlefield." After he finished reading, he closed the book and said, "I wonder if the story came true."  
It did. Beethoven's internals were showing, and Midway flew off to find The Reader's castle.

The sky beams vanished. Quincy only had the way to The Reader's castle left to go. Why? Because he didn't know it yet, but the time periods were starting to merge!  
Meanwhile, Midway was CHARGING through The Reader's castle, hopping mad. He went up the stairs, went through the metal armors, took some more stairs, and came across a hallway overlooking the sky. After knocking out the knights there, he took another flight of stairs on the right and cut the two knights guarding it in half. Upon marching up the throne room, he saw Father Pure on the ground, having fought The Reader beforehand.  
"Why hello there, Midway. Tell me. Do you know the difference between the power of Radiance and arousal? One of them keeps you up until heaven itself dawns on you. The other is just there to divert eye contact! You can never look at the same piece of art twice! Do you know why I have those sex scenes on the wall?! It's beca--" The Reader said.  
Midway just brandished the Radiant Spear, pink in color, and knocked The Reader aside.  
"I know what you did to The Denizen, and it's terrifying! Lower than the low! You should be ashamed of yourself!" Midway screamed.  
"I am not." The Reader said, getting up. With one of the Six Genres, he froze time, just as Quincy arrived at the scene. Midway used a mark on his arm to counteract the time stop with a burst of Radiance.   
"What did you just do?!" The Reader exclaimed as the background changed to something resembling a galaxy.   
"See, it's hereditary. I went into hiding a long time ago and continued to wander the universe's worlds as a man with hidden powers. Aurora used to be my name until recently, where I found a new home. I formed my biker group, but I kept my Radiance powers an absolute secret. Still, I'm a proud member of Solar's bloodline!" Midway explained.   
With the Radiant Spear in hand, he spun it at an unimaginable rate. The Reader tried to catch up with his sword stabs, but Midway's sheer power and speed actually outpaced him and cut him a few times.   
Getting up from the recoil from the clash, The Reader points at the screen he watches everything from and says the well-meaning words.   
"I have already melded the time periods! The years are all mine, which is why I possess the Six Genres!" The Reader explains. He didn't know it yet, but Quincy freed Sprite and Solar, who The Reader trapped in the castle walls. All three of them were watching from behind the wall.  
The Reader readied the Three Shaders, which were products of the defeated souls of the Yearpoint Guardians. They were activated when the Yearpoint Schedule activated.  
"Now, let me ask you something. Do you want to achieve the ultimate Radiance or the ultimate Dominion? One power eclipses the other! You know what to choose, Midway!" The Reader said.

Back in their pasts, The Reader, who was known as Sear back in 2015, and Midway found their respective courses in life by coming into contact with their respective elements. Sear found a magaz--  
"Who even still reads these anymore?!" Sear says upon noticing one. He steps on it and crushes it under his heel. Sear then locates a place of similar content by using a phone. Once he found the Hexagon Foundation, he suddenly felt a power rush course through him. From this came the desire to have more. He found the Dominion.   
"If this lasts forever, as they say, then where can I find more of it?!" Sear exclaimed. He thought of the next thing ahead of him, Midway's first taste of sheer power, revolting.

Midway, then known as Aurora in 2017, underwent trials and tribulations. He went into exile from his former ruling place because of reasons he can't quite remember. He thinks everyone there treated him badly, but in reality, he probably did some horrible things himself. He is absolutely willing to leave this behind, for the other side of Cuteness Valley awaited him. The overwhelming amount of glitter there left after-images in the sky, which revealed translucent photos of small animals in its wake. The pink lightning enveloped Aurora's entire body as the man thought to himself: "Would anyone be willing to get tired of this?" That's when he found the Lockstep Shelter, which has nothing but cute things. One room contains a pet shelter, which is fully maintained by three sections of staff, and another holds whole books filled with photos of children and pets having fun with each other.  
"This must be a brilliant method of containing such vibrant motion! Is there a name for it?" Aurora thought to himself. A staff member noticed Aurora's condition and asked him, "Is the Radiance treating you well?"  
Midway then found his purpose.

The powers of Radiance and Dominion clash as the two stand head to head, weapons were drawn. The Reader took the time to unfurl his wings as he revealed himself to everyone in the room.  
"I have no time to say anything except for my introduction. Sear traveled this world looking for the ultimate power source to warm up to and get comfortable. I am that traveler, and look at how far I've come! Now that time has combined, I can freely move the arena like this!" The Reader shouts as he transforms the arena into an enormous cube that he can shift at will. Quincy and his allies experienced this shift for themselves, shortly before they realized that they could walk on walls.  
Afterward, Midway leaped and kicked The Reader hard as he could. The Reader flew back and landed on the wall. He got up and stood on it.   
Quincy ran on the wall he was on towards him and brandished his laser sword. Heaven's Eye was bothered by the influx of both energies running throughout the cube in currents. It convulsed and broke its armor to reveal a sleek frame bordered by Tron lines. The wings disappeared, replaced by a jet system. The sword is also gone, replaced by another hand. Heaven's Eye has reached its fourth phase, where it prioritizes Conjurations and Radiance manipulation over direct attacks. It teleports to The Reader and engages in a clash with him. The overwhelming speed of its punches drove The Reader back so far that the cube started to fall apart, replaced by brilliant, ethereal space.  
"Is this what you wanted? Cold, hard air bordered by forces that you already know? Come on now." The Reader said to the allies.

Then a black hole ripped through open space, having been triggered by the force of a hundred powers. The timeline splits in half; everyone disappears except for Heaven's Mirror and Quincy as they both fly through the empty wormhole generated by the split.

"What's going on?!" Quincy yelled. Nobody could hear him, however. The next area certainly surprised him a bunch.

Notes:  
This is what happens when you rush through a story and have no time for an ending


	3. Mile of a Different Color + Epilogue

"Hello there. I want to introduce you to someone familiar.”

A mysterious sleek figure stood over Quincy. The latter wanted to know where everyone was, but even moving around was a struggle for him even though he wasn’t bound by anything.

“Listen here, soldier. I’m not doing anything to you. That ending that you wanted? It’s all in here.” the figure said, pointing to his head, which looks like a translucent crystallized hard-drive molded into a polygon. 

“But first, you’re gonna have to move closer to me. I’m six feet away from you. If you want to see the ending that I withdrew, you must overcome your worst situation: actually putting in effort!” the figure explained.

“I’ve been putting in tons of effort to get here! What do you mea--” Quincy said.  
“Not you. Your viewpoint. This world has a ruler separate from The Reader. We Reality Shapers read from his content every passing moment to decide what to do next. That’s why I’m so fast. Meanwhile, you’re holding yourself back in order to deliver what’s more comfortable to you! Well guess what, actually get up and approach me!” the figure said, revealing himself as;

“Heaven’s Eye?” Quincy asked.  
“Heaven’s Mirror, ” he said. “I’ve grown since the last time you called for me. I eventually gained the ability to read reality’s pages, trap others in it, and form entire alternate realities out of the gem in my head. From there, I can affect our reality using the events I have stored here. This empty room is known as the Wavelength Chamber, and it’s where incomplete events ferment and become complete again. You’re unable to move because another timeline is beginning to turn its back on you. A timeline where you were once The Reader.”

“Wait, I was The Reader?” Quincy asked.

“Not in my reality, but another one wants your attention. I see you’ve been slowly approaching me from the ground ever since we’ve talked.” Heaven’s Mirror said.

Thus, Quincy was shown Heaven’s Mirror’s current reality.

The Reader was shown to have exponentially powerful skills, including unfathomable speed, overwhelming potential, and the power to reshape space. Using this, he managed to knock Midway out of commission using an empowered version of the Three Shaders, which turn out to be massive rays of light that shine in three different colors: red, blue, and purple. Solar was dealt with using a pillar of Dominion under his feet (he crashlanded in Solution City alive and well), Father Pure almost died when a wave beam composed of Radiance and Dominion put together struck him in the face (he recovered from this and made a tactical retreat to Solution City), and Eschaton saw that everyone else was in a bind, so he gave a large portion of his power to Heaven’s Eye (Just after that, he was pierced by one of The Reader’s Arousal Arrows, which are so filled with Dominion that they burst on contact and kill anyone who doesn’t first protect themselves with a large amount of Radiance. Eschaton was reduced to only a head, but Father Pure hopes to restore him soon.) When Heaven’s Eye became Heaven’s Mirror, what followed was a series of massive clashes from both Reality Shapers. The Reader attempted to overcome Heaven’s Mirror with a massive burst of Dominion, but Heaven’s Mirror read reality’s pages beforehand and countered it with a wave of Radiance large enough to turn part of Solution City into a glitter-infested locale similar to Cuteness Valley. The Reader was cut in half and eviscerated, his blood and gore replaced with glitter and sparkles. The very concept of Dominion 99% vanished, and The Reader’s castle was sent away in an alternate reality.

“Now that you have seen my ending, do you want to experience the effects for yourself? If so, stand up and walk through the door.” Heaven’s Mirror said to Quincy.

As he did so, a gray humanoid figure ran up to him and tried to force him down.

“Your effort is canceled. Sit down, and only think for yourself.” The Reader’s fragment said to Quincy. As he said that, Quincy flipped behind it and threw it behind him. Heaven’s Mirror tossed Quincy his laser sword, but Quincy refused to touch it for a while. The fragment got back up and tried to punch Quincy, but he dodged, grabbed and threw it aside, grabbed his laser sword, and threw it at the fragment, stabbing it and charging it with enough Radiance to power a pop concert. The fragment exploded in gray dust.

“Creative use of your sword,” Mirror said. “Proceed.”

Quincy did, and the next thing he saw was a greyed out version of Solution City marred by inactivity. A large part of it was uninhabitable as most of its residents moved to the second district. 

“This is supposed to be the other side’s Savannah Central, correct?” Quincy questioned.

“Yes, and only you have the power to change it. You’re going to have to become a Reality Shaper to fix what you have done as The Reader.” Mirror responded.

“I thought that reality wasn’t canon!” Quincy exclaimed.

“Both of them are. It’s just that one of the endings has more influence than the other. You will have to change reality’s pages by yourself. I can’t fight your battle. I can only assist you.” Mirror explained.

Ah, the hero’s journey, but with a twist. Let’s see what we have in store.

Quincy’s first opponent was a being created by The Reader to patrol his new dystopian world: Sweet Virus. It has the power to create clouds that disorients the target and easily place them in range of its powerful strikes. Such an effect occurred on Quincy when he got close to an “abandoned” theater that was actually still running, but was guarded by Sweet Virus.

“Huh. I actually recognize this place,” Quincy says.

“Well you can’t go inside…” Mirror responds.

“I’ll do you the honors first,” Sweet Virus says to them both.

“How so?” Quincy says, readying a fighter stance.

Sweet Virus releases its cloud, which is a dark pink color.

Quincy throws a dozen punches, none of which land.

Meanwhile, as he was getting drowsy, Sweet Virus attacked him by punching and kicking from seven different angles.

“Why can’t you hit him?” Mirror shouted.

“I can’t see where he’s at! The more I look at him, the next minute, he’s gone!” Quincy responded.

Mirror had one solution to this unstoppable attack: he stops time.

“That’s enough. I’m done waiting.” he says afterward.

While time is frozen in a green-and-black haze, Mirror kicks Sweet Virus so high that Virus flies above the theater.

Mirror follows that up with a 14-hit combo from his rail-thin sword on his arm. Once that has concluded, Mirror simply flicks Virus, sending it flying far away from the theater.

This removes the barrier around the theater AND dispels the clouds.

Mirror unfreezes time.

“What did you do--” Quincy attempts to ask.

“Nothing. I fixed the problem. Now, we walk in the theater and discuss our next move.” Mirror responds.

That they do.

“Remember that tavern you saw when you were warped further into the Hexagon Foundation?” Mirror asks.  
“How do you know I was there for that?!” Quincy exclaims.

Mirror just taps at his head.

“Oh. Yeah, I do--” Quincy replies before he realizes that the entire theater has been molded into that tavern.  
“What? This isn’t a tavern at all! This is a--” Quincy says.  
“Yep, it’s been done. Orange and white all around, more men than you can count. Welcome to your--” Mirror announces to Quincy. This even though those two were the only ones there!

Just then, a black-and-white striped version of Quincy descends from the ceiling. He looked like he was ready to fight, so Quincy just kicked him.

The other Quincy grabbed his foot and threw him aside.

Teleporting forward, he hits our Quincy hard enough to send him flying through the window, though no damage was done. 

The other Quincy then hit 5 times by teleporting all around him, then launching him back inside.

“What kinda beef he got with me?!” our Quincy shouted.  
“I don’t know. He looks like he’s from another world entirely. I’ll size him up.” Mirror said.

Mirror borrowed our Quincy’s laser sword and dealt some hits to Quincy from another world.

Another World Quincy brandished his own sword and clashed with Mirror.

This world’s Quincy took the time to flee and gather his bearings behind the “kitchen”, which morphed itself into the outside of a warehouse, for the ruse had been broken.

“Where in time am I now?” This world’s Quincy asked himself.  
The warehouse looked quite familiar to Quincy, but he just didn’t know what was inside of it. He took some steps forward and entered the building.

As he went inside, a huge statue of a fox stood in the middle, and Quincy stared at it with a combination of surprise and confusion. “Why would a fox statue be sitting here of all places…?”

“Tell me, traveler. What do you value most with what you create? Fame? Money? Or just burning hot passion?”

That distant masculine voice alerted Quincy that someone else was on the premises. He couldn’t tell where he was because of how dark every location that wasn’t pierced by the light was. The fox descended from the ceiling and dove at Quincy, notably targeting his head and not anywhere else. 

Quincy jumped back and readied a fighting stance.

The fox--

“The fox said that his name was the Apex Predator. I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean, but I’m thinking he’s a powerful somebody.” Quincy thought.

Apex Predator tried to kick at his head, but Quincy ducked and replied with a punch combo. 

Apex blocked the last hit and threw him behind so far back that he had to teleport to Quincy’s location to get a lead on him.

“A Reality Shaper! He must have created this place!” Quincy thought.

“And what makes you think that?” Apex said. He can read minds, which comes with the territory of being a Reality Shaper. Nothing can escape the minds of these people.  
“Well, there’s the statue of you, the warehouse losing its orange color when you get hit, that huge symbol of your face on the floor…” Quincy said.

“Good eye,” Apex replied. “You wanna get your bearings together?”

Quincy then jerked back as dark energy emerged from him. Something about what he said before fighting Quincy caused it to appear. From that, Quincy tried to back away.

“Is that something else I gotta fight?!” Apex exclaimed as he brandished his Reality Shaper weapon: The Glitch Saber.

Apex rushed after a four-armed Quincy, but the strength of the Outer Forces held him back a bit. Quincy follows this up with a move he can’t control.

800-hit punches.

Apex, now bleeding from every area from his front, readied his Glitch Saber and let it do all the work.

Faster than speeds the Outer Forces can register, every shadow was cut down from Quincy’s back, and the true perpetrator was revealed to them both after the teleport fest.

“Quincy? You were supposed to protect us all!” Eschaton cried out.

“Eschaton? You don’t look like you,” Quincy said with concern.

“Is this guy a friend of yours?” Apex asked.  
“Nope! Must be a clone of the real deal. I bet he’s somewhere around here.” Quincy replied.

“Well, I’m about to size him up,” Apex responded.

That’s when Mirror appeared outside the warehouse and dashed inside to find Quincy. His battle with the other Quincy forced the latter to leave prematurely due to Mirror’s power, but he did make sure that he would return. 

Once Mirror went inside, he ran fast enough to break the sound barrier and crush Eschaton’s head in and launch him a considerable distance before Apex could even move.

“What was that?” Quincy exclaimed.

“We’ve got some explaining to do,” Mirror said to both Quincy and Apex Predator.

“Who is this guy?” Mirror asked Quincy.

“Well, I just met him so I can’t quite say,” Quincy responds.  
“I’m the one everyone looks up to. The ruler of this establishment.” Predator says.

“Oh. He kinda looks the type. I wonder how strong he is.” Mirror wonders.  
“He’s a Reality Shaper.” Quincy casually comments.

Mirror looks at Predator with surprise as all three of them walk out of the door to return Quincy to Solution City.  
“Where are you going?” Predator asks curiously.

“We’re going back to Solution City, where we came from.” Mirror replies.  
“Aren’t you already here?” Predator responds.

“Wait, this warehouse is actually in Solution City?” Quincy asks.

“Indeed. You probably got here through Deception, a phenomenon where you enter a place, it looks like another place and weird things can happen, like teleporting to a completely different side of the city, like you are here. You’re on the western side of Solution City, which is greyed out like the eastern side. I don’t know how it happened, but I think it may have something to do with the universe getting turned on its side.” Predator explains.

Quincy looks at Mirror with contempt upon hearing that last part. Little does he know that Mirror cast that black hole on that side of the world and emptied out the City to show Quincy what it means to have the world to oneself. More specifically, how to properly care for something. All that has been done is pointless fighting. He still hasn’t tried to make the journey to the Sanctum properly.

Once they walk outside, they encounter one of the Sanctum’s bodyguards, who only goes by a number, 416. 

“Why is the Sanctum sending troops against us ?” Mirror asks.

Predator brandishes his Glitch Saber and cuts the angel just once.

The angel flies backward with a huge glitchy gash in its chest. It then disappears behind the trees.

“That sword is wicked strong. I won’t be carried through all of my fights like this, will I?” Quincy wonders.

“Well, no. After all, you are the man who sold the world, and now you must get it back. Then, pieces of the ending that you so crave will be granted to you.” Mirror explains.

“Ah, got it,” Quincy responds. “Was I really The Reader?”

Mirror responds, “It’s complicated to say the least.”

That angel then leaps back into action. It almost cuts Predator when Quincy’s arm starts marking a blue vein. With it, Quincy does a massive uppercut, taking the angel by surprise.

Higher and higher they go, they shoot for the skies, and in response, the angel opens up the way to the Sanctum. Quincy responds to this with, “Go ahead! Take me in there! Let me see what’s in store!” However, the angel refuses to let him go. Quincy then swipes his hand across the angel’s body, sending it flying so fast across the air that its body disappears, presumably back to the Sanctum.

“Hey Quincy! You left a crack in the sky!” Predator yelled.

Quincy lands back on the ground.

“That ain’t my doing. I think it leads somewhere. To find out where, I'm gonna do a bit of searching around the city. ALL of the city,” Quincy responded.

It’s truly a roundabout path.

That blue vein holds one of the most powerful combat systems that Quincy can use; The Breakthrough System. Conjurations make a return, some new ones are added. But the real meat of the system is the Divine Fusion. Any Conjuration that is compatible with it can augment into Quincy and give him new and advanced forms. Zeropoint Form is the first one he discovered, and he did so just before he reached his next destination…

The three waded through the trees and wandered through an alley. There was plenty of junk to be found throughout the path, but where it led them to was most surprising.

“Is this Savannah Central?” Mirror wondered aloud.

“But completely greyed out. I don’t even see the arch anymore. Tell me, Mirror. What happened to it?” Quincy questioned.

“You’ll see.” Mirror said.

Just then, however, Quincy saw everything glitch out. Both of his friends disappeared, and a large, glitchy tornado appeared around him. Everywhere, Quincy wondered where his companions went, and they did so in kind when they noticed that Quincy was gone. Quincy didn’t know where he ended up. He felt a massive pressure come over him which left him feeling drowsy. He wondered if this was the effect of Sweet Virus. It sure wasn’t - This was in fact the Divine Sanctum. IT was torn apart by a subgroup of the Polygons known as the Geometrics, and they are much stronger and bigger than the Polygons. One such tank tore into the main room, forcing some guards to appear and attempt to take it out. Quincy just stood there, staring the tank down as the guards behind him dropped dead, having been blasted apart by the tank’s sheer power. Quincy wasn’t letting this tank go anywhere, knowing it probably had a role in destroying the Sanctum. Quincy could feel a connection going on between him and the tank, and it was amplified when the tank shot at him, colliding him with a Dominion Energy charge, changing his form, and granting him a new set of powers. A purple-colored Conjuration Fusion. Immunity to the Dominion was granted to him, allowing him to shrug off most of the tank’s attacks. Swiftly and carefully, Quincy dismantled the tank and kicked its driver out, destroying it in one hit. 

Wandering around the Sanctum, he found out that most of it was destroyed by the tornado. The guards here are absolutely horrified at the damage done to their stronghold, and they feel like it will only get worse.

“What’s next, the Geometrics coming to the world below?”  
“The world is not safe anymore!”  
“The Geometrics are getting stronger and we have little to no defenses anymore…”

Quincy wanted none of this. He ran past the hallways and made it to the rehab ward, where he found the angel that once attacked him.

“I was corrupted! I’m absolutely sorry that I even--”  
Quincy retorted with, “Nah, I already know that something’s afoot. A tank that looked nothing like you guys once attacked me. That’s why I’m glowing purple right now. I’m gonna discover the meaning behind all of this, is that fine with you?”

Then the black hole that got him into this carried him back outside to Savannah Central. He was reunited with Predator and Mirror, only to be confronted with a TON of Geometrics once the meteor hit the ground. Quincy readied Zeropoint form and brandished a long purple chain. This chain cut through most of the Geometrics in the area, and as Quincy swung it, the bodies on the chain racked up a huge kill count. Quincy marveled at how awesome of a weapon he has on him now. That is, until the massive battle tank, Arpeggio, showed itself in the chaotic tides of war. There were only four people fighting this battle, but Arpeggio managed to slow down the oncoming waves of Geometrics. It appeared to be linked to the enemies themselves, for when it rode on the battlefield, cannon pointed at Quincy, everyone around the tank froze still. “Does destroying this thing destroy everything else?” Quincy thought. “Let’s give that a shot.” With that, he had Predator cut it apart with Glitch Saber, but Arpeggio ran over him and shot at Quincy twice. Quincy absorbed the damage and countered with an even bigger beam of purple energy from his hands. Arpeggio tried to fire a salvo of homing missiles in the air, but Mirror leaped up and grabbed them all. He then fell down and slammed the missiles on Arpeggio’s surface the mere moment when Quincy punched it hard enough to send it flying. Its defeat caused the whole army of Geometrics to perish….

The black hole comes again, and Quincy is questioning why it’s showing up again and again despite having only transported him to this timeline once. Either way, all four of them were carried to a large, open room. It looked very much like a boys’ room, but the most important part was the capsule. The capsule in the center of the bed. Quincy examined it, and it grew propellers that were even longer than the lamp on the desk! Propeller Delta, Predator called it. The toys hiding in every sort of crevice imaginable were scared sick of this thing, for its blades had the power to cut through red oak wood! Imagine what it could do to mere plastic! Quincy leaped on top of Propeller Delta before the blades could spin, and punched the capsule an immeasurable number of times. The capsule cracked and it released an energy field as retaliation. Quincy hung onto it with his Zeropoint appendages, and he vowed never to let go. Propeller Delta flew around the room, going haywire as it tried to find a way to cut Quincy clean in half. Little did it know that he was right below it, hanging by a thin strand. Propeller eventually made it outside, flying high above the ground. None of the suburbia could see the chaos happening in the skies. Quincy tried his hardest to climb up his strand of purple energy, negated only by increasing air pressure from the skies above. He tried taking out his gun and shooting Propeller to decrease its altitude, and little did he know it was weak to bullets because he accidentally shot the actual propeller, causing it to lose altitude. “Well, that’s one way to do it…” Quincy thought to himself. He continued firing the gun at the propellers until the machine was nothing more than a capsule with broken wings. Quincy then did a power move: he grabbed the capsule by climbing up his appendage and then gripping it. Then he held onto it tight until it hit the ground. Quincy, tiny compared to his surroundings, made it out just fine. He sneaked to the front porch only for the black hole to come up from behind him.

While Quincy was in the void, a voice spoke to him. “Your efforts to destroy my army have proven successful. However, you still have a lot to uncover.”

Then a whole gallery of rather unsafe Affinities revealed themselves to Quincy.

“Where’d you get all this porn from?!” he thought. “Entire rooms of nothing but this. Are you prepared to escape my rooms to fix the Sanctum?!”

There were six of those rooms. Quincy armed himself to dodge whatever came at him; these rooms had turrets whose shots bypassed Zeropoint.

It didn’t even end there. Among all the fighting Quincy did against the Geometrics, the air of the room; the power of the Affinities there transformed him into something altogether different. Volatile Form, where he gains a helmet and an immunity to all elements except Radiance. He ripped through every enemy in the area, dodging turret attacks by flipping off of the blue squares that function as walls. Meanwhile, the voice, Quincy from another world, leaped out of the walls and challenged our hero to a fight. “I wanna take that form for a spin.” Another World Quincy said. Little did he know that Volatile Form was extremely powerful. His mighty claw attacks ripped through AW Quincy’s armor and actually dealt quite a lot of damage to him with every strike.

“Two can play that game.” AW Quincy said, holding Quincy’s claws.

“What do you mean? I have you at my mercy,” Quincy responded.

“You see, I plan to continue the work of my predecessor. I already have all Six Genres… Wait, make that EIGHT. Eight Genres.” AW Quincy replied.  
“Oh yeah? What made you decide to add two more?” Quincy questioned.

“A little bargain from the man himself. See, I went on a business trip with him once while you weren’t looking. Even though he’s almost dead, he was still able to oversee me fight your Radiant Army. Seriously, those guys made me sweat, but then my old man gave me another Genre to work with. Then, I kicked the crap out of your dudes. All six of them. Do you think an army of children’s toys would work against someone so into his element like me?” AW Quincy explained. 

The Square Zone then started tilting as both Quincies saw the whole arena shift into a polygonal mess. While Quincy was trying to grip the surface, he saw a familiar piece of art on the triangular prism:

“You had this saved in memory and didn’t tell me?!” Quincy yelled.

“Ah yes. Dominion Affinity #71: The fourth installment in a series by one particular artist whose love of shading brought me to my knees. You probably didn’t see this one because you were so focused on the other three you thought of keeping around. Fear not. For this one has plenty of d--- ” AW Quincy said.

Quincy took that time to climb up the prism and surprise attack AW Quincy with his claw. 

“Maybe if you’d shut up and focus, you wouldn’t be so darn horny!” Quincy commented.

“Your one-liners need work,” AW Quincy replied.

“Is getting a fox and a bunny together the best thing you can do?” Quincy asked.

“Nope. THIS IS!” AW Quincy said just before spreading his arms, unleashing a field of glitch energy powerful enough to launch Quincy far away from his alternate universe counterpart. 

“Even if I did see that coming, there was no way I could have dodged that.” Quincy thought.

“Dominion Affinity #609: Where the pressure’s so intense that every part increases in size! Let the…” AW Quincy yelled before his voice was drowned out by Quincy’s thoughts.  
“Yammer on, prince of lust. I have no time for your pathetic reasoning.” Quincy thought.

“...And the floor was full of it, indeed.” AW Quincy said as he closed up his book. Then a marker flew at him and hit his face.

“You have exactly 5 to live.” Quincy quipped confidently.  
“5 what? Seconds? Minutes? Hours?” AW Quincy asked concerningly.  
“5... 4…. 3…. 2... “ Quincy counted with a smug look on his face.

Artist’s Dilemma lit itself up after he said 1, badly damaging AW Quincy until he was bleeding profusely from his mouth. As he landed on the floor, he saw some of his shattered bones trailing the ground, covered in blood.

“What did you do to me?!” AW Quincy said. 

“You won’t be getting up from that one anytime soon.” Quincy said. “Lion cub, descend from the skies! Your split center will determine the fate of battle!”

“Twin Element #214… The lion cub of the Outer Forces. She went there because she was torn apart from the bottom by one of our numbers. None of us know who did it, but it pretty much scarred her for whatever life she had at the end of it all. By the time she reached the dark side, the Forces were already trying to use her as a war utility. This is how she channels that dark energy.” AW Quincy explained.

Quincy then receives a massive boost in power from the lion cub’s Radiance. The remaining Dominion power was used to chuck AW Quincy out of the polygon world.

“Glad that’s over.” Quincy said.

“ You couldn’t be more wrong about that!” AW Quincy shouted in his hammiest voice ever.

“Did it not register?” Quincy wondered out loud.

“More like you didn’t actually harm me!” AW Quincy said. 

Just then, as the glitchy effects got worse, Solution City began getting adversely affected. The entire western side disappears, the entire city of Zootopia underneath it vanishes with its inhabitants. Everything then starts levitating.

AW Quincy fires a transparent beam of kinetic energy from his finger. Quincy evades it and another three lasers. It isn’t until he nearly slips on a platform that he finally gets hit by the laser and flies head-first into the Echo Chamber of Suggestive Arts, which is exactly what it implies. A place where the bridge between tasteful and explicit is fully reinforced, it aims to provide a safe environment for testing out the secrets of the Twin Element, a combination of Radiance and Dominion energy. Quincy was already proficient at both, but the Twin Element demands more from him in a seemingly empty world.

“This can’t be too bad. Time to go exploring,” Quincy thought. It was a vast world out there in the Echo Chamber.

Mysteriously enough, the Echo Chamber shows Quincy pieces of art called “Radiant Pieces” from the main world. While it doesn’t faze Quincy as much as it should, he still felt like he wasn’t good at much with drawing. But that’s when Shelly came in. An experienced guardian of the Chamber. She was very similar to Quincy, but with a strengthened resolve and a faster initiative. She offered to help him, but at a price.

“Welcome to the Echo Chamber! Now can I see that pen in your hand?” she said.

She grabbed it like a magnet and fled off the cliffside with it. Quincy had no idea what to think of her, but nevertheless he feels like she would be a good, if skeptical, ally.

Shelley proved herself to be formidable on the Canvas. One she made it to that room, she picked out 16 of the 144 colors available to her, then started drawing a rather large rune circle. It had green letters on the spokes, and 7 colors were used to fill in the panels.

Quincy had already dove off the cliffside by the time Shelley was done creating the circle. When she was done, she activated it with one touch and transported herself into the second floor of the Echo Chamber. Quincy followed suit once he saw the portal.

“That drawing I made? That’s going in your records. You are in no position to tell yourself that you’re no good at anything, hear?” Shelley told Quincy. 

“I never said that I didn’t think I was good at art, I just wasn’t motivated!” Quincy retorted.

The only thing that broke their conversation was one of the Reader’s Diamond Dogs descending from the air. It was Ace, who wandered in here upon obtaining the souls of 6 people he tried to date (roll with it), two of which are complete. Upon meeting our heroes, he says,

“Greetings, would you like to take a look at the souls I’ve gathered?”

“Frankly, now’s not the time for this.” Shelley says.

Seeing that all but one of the souls were girls, Quincy makes a quick deduction.

“You were out there for little more than quick enjoyment!" Quincy says.

"You're right. I already managed to achieve that twice." Ace said. "I won't use them now, however. Part I'm concerned about is halting your journey. The Denizen gave me a call. Basically if you keep those Dominion Affinities stored in Millennium, the world will end. I will fight tooth and nail to make sure they're still there."

Shelley started by jumping back and using a Radiance Affinity to throw knives at Ace. He responds by blocking the knives with one of his souls, effectively using it as a meatshield. He then fires back by punching her across the room. Quincy responds by Conjuring a tiger known for literal kung fu fighting and lets her handle Ace. They trade hits with each other and eventually take their fight to the air. Ace then backhands the tiger so hard that Quincy leaps up there and attempts to fight Ace himself. 

Then, the black hole emerges, much to their surprise. Quincy exclaims, “What is your problem?!” Not even Ace knows why it’s there, but it transforms him into a different being altogether. His true form as a Diamond Dog gives him claws and a tail overlaying his body. He also takes on more feral characteristics. With this new set of powers, he augments each soul into his body, causing his strength to exponentially jump. Quincy found it incredibly difficult to keep up with him, especially as his skin crystallized into multicolored diamonds, preventing Ace from getting hit entirely. Diamonds are the hardest rocks in the Mohs scale, so Ace’s newfound armor was near-impenetrable. Fortunately, a particularly high-ranking angel came out through a black hole, kicked Quincy and Shelley through yet another, then got on his horse and prepared to fight Ace. Their fight was tense, carrying them all over the Echo Chamber. While Ace did manage to cripple this angel’s horse, he responded by spearing Ace and dragging him to the depths of the Chamber, with the angel watching the Chamber be destroyed in the process.

The black hole opens back up and both Quincy and Shelley are riding biplanes. The two were overtaken by the self-proclaimed “leader of the skies”, Jack. Hailing from the same league as Ace, Jack was a master of the field of cropping Affinities, much like Midway and his biker crew were before. 

“Hey, flying ace! Let’s see you race through the open space of the Blue Zone!” Jack called out. He didn’t seem to act like an enemy. He sounded like he was just challenging Quincy to a race. But what the Blue Zone held was something that would change Quincy before he knew it.

Jack’s message “Come inside, you’re gonna love this!” faded into the atmosphere as Quincy found himself weaving through lines of light and blue rings as the aftermath of the Echo Chamber swirls in front of the group. The black hole then appears again, with Quincy sighing upon seeing it (“Someone’s messing up the deadlines!” he said) and then diving down below the swaths of fog in order to confront Jack. Piloting a C-130 Hercules, Jack’s plane was more than large enough to support two people on it, so Quincy leaped on it and went to Jack’s location quick enough just to see him transform into his Diamond Dog form. 

“Black Hole’s kinda effective, isn’t it? It keeps transforming us into our ultimate forms before we can even get adjusted to our regular forms!” Jack said.

“It’s strange, I don’t know why it’s even there.” Quincy said.

Jack surprised Quincy by attempting to hit him with his tail. Quincy grabbed his tail and flung him across the plane. 

“What’s your deal?” Quincy questioned.  
“The Blue Zone. The reason why I made it was for you to know things you haven’t known before. Like the wonders of a world previously explored in the old days. The old universe… The Reader has described it to me perfectly. Thus, I wanted to make a world like that. The Blue Zone came naturally, and now it’s beckoning you to join its side.” Jack explained.

Shelley was having trouble with it herself, while she is immune to its effects the enemies and lack of breathing space to move around in is making her consider just boarding the plane like a hoverboard and firing at the enemies with her powers. She didn’t do it, though.

“So, are you going to succumb to the Blue Zone, or…” Jack said before brandishing a blue energy spear and throwing it at Quincy, hitting him square in the chest.

“...do I need to make you?!” 

Jack rushed at Quincy and tried to take him down while he was still reeling, but Quincy threw him into the cockpit, cracking it. He then did a kick that launched a shockwave powerful enough to launch Jack through the cockpit, destroying it entirely. This propels Jack through the winds and launches Quincy far back enough to send him into the next black hole.

This actually leads him back to Solution City, with the spear still in his chest. Jack re-enters through the black hole, still in his Diamond Dog form.

“You know full and well that this fight is not through!” he said.

They were both standing in the ruins of Solution City, and while Quincy was devastated to witness what happened to it, he’s more focused on Jack.

“That spear in your chest is designed to put more focus on Dominion abilities. You’ll become a better combatant in no time, but there may be some side effects latched on. Are you prepared to face them head-on?” Jack explained.

“I personally don’t want to take this thing off. But if I rearrange your body, that may change.” Quincy said. 

Both of them brandished their weapons before rushing at each other. Blocking each other’s blows, they find themselves levitating due to the effects of the hollowed out Solution City. 

They keep trading hits, sometimes flying back due to the recoil. The levitation stops at a certain point, so they land on metal platforms to keep their footing. It’s extremely hard for them to hit each other here because of how far the platforms are from each other. 

Quincy pulls out his gun, but Jack teleports behind him and attempts to claw him. Quincy just aims his gun behind him and fires, crippling Jack because of the location where the bullet hit. Quincy follows up with a hard throw. 

He gives chase in the air and smacks Jack around a few times, eventually launching him into one of Solution City’s ruined buildings. 

Jack regains his composure upon landing on the ground and materializes a sword of his own.

The two swordfighters start clashing with each other. 

Swing after swing, their dodging and clashing came to a head when Quincy was launched into a wall, but ran on it after landing and ambushed Jack from above. He started with a kick to disarm Jack, then a slash to cut his arm off.

Reeling from the pain, Jack’s Diamond Dog form started to wear off.

Quincy finishes up his run by slashing Jack a few times, then topping off the combo by writing Jack’s name on his forehead with a familiar-looking pen, then launching him off the building with the resulting explosion of color. 

Jack didn’t survive the fall, as his armor was long gone and he has nothing to reduce his momentum with.

“That spear he threw in me, it’s supposed to increase my powers, right? If so, then why do I feel such a mysterious circumstance happening to my body?” Quincy contemplated. Little did he know…

He had some blue lines running down his hand.

Quincy returns back to the ground, and it is just then he discovers his blue vein running down his arm. “What’s this? This wasn’t there before…” he wonders to himself. Just then, out from behind the debris, are five hooded creatures with card suits on them. “I think I’ve seen you guys before. How’s it going?” Quincy asks before they reveal themselves. “That’s a bit more than I wanted to see, mind you,” he says concerningly.  
“I think it’s a perfect fit for you.”  
“Who was that?” Quincy says in a bit of a panic as he turns around and wonders where the voice was.  
“I’m right here. Riiiiiiiiiiiiight…”  
Quincy’s chest suddenly has a painful mark emblazoned on it! A phantasmal fox rushes toward the hooded guys and swipes across them, ripping bloody holes in them all.  
“Wow. I didn’t think-- ...Are you serious? You ain’t got nothing on, yet you don’t show anything either!” Quincy realizes.  
“I’m a manifestation of your inner secrets. A once-in-a-lifetime guardian. Wilde Side. Can you remember that?” he says.  
“Yeah, sure. Just note: I got this blue vein--”  
“More on that later.” Wilde Side says as he returns to Quincy’s side.  
Quincy walks around the desolated Solution City when he notes the Artist’s Guild still standing.  
“You know, I heard you wanted to enter this place and get a membership.” Wilde Side comments.  
“Yeah, I did. But everyone keeps getting in before I do.” Quincy says.  
Another hooded figure, this time wearing a Clubs suit, is watching the two from above the Guild.  
“Maybe perhaps they have more experience than you do? Working in the field for longer? Hey, look - It’s still early. You still have a lot to prepare for. Don’t make yourself look higher than--” Wilde Side says. Then he reads Quincy’s records mid-sentence.   
“I catch ONE glimpse of your bio, turns out you have an inferiority complex generated by your lack of social skills, apparently. Should I fish that parasite from you?” Wilde Side says.  
“No need.” the hooded figure says while diving down from the ceiling.  
“Not so fast!” Wilde Side exclaims.  
He uppercuts the figure so hard that it splits into two.  
“Now, where were we?” Wilde Side says.  
“First, we need to fix the Divine Sanctum,” Quincy says.  
“Now tell me how we think you can do that.” Wilde Side says.  
“First, we have to defeat the one that split it up. His name is King.” Quincy notes.  
“How do you know that?” Wilde Side questions.  
Quincy is unable to answer that for some reason.  
“By the way, that blue vein on your arm? That’s a Dominion stimulator. It supercharges your Dominion usage to get better results from your attacks.” Wilde Side comments.  
“What you said sounded various layers of suggestive.” Quincy notices.  
“Hey, it was suggestive content that led you here to this alternate universe.” Wilde Side admits.  
“Alternate… universe?” Quincy wonders.  
“Yeah. Your gun got replaced, too. It’s a revolver with a protective yellow shield on it. It spins meaning it fires better and quicker shots. Try it out in the firing range. We’ll look for some more enemies later on.”

Then, a black hole, red in color this time, took Quincy to an unidentified settlement. This time, he was surrounded by buff guys of different sizes. “Try to keep your composure.” Wilde Side told Quincy. “Yeah, like that’s easy to do,” Quincy whispered back.  
“Recruiting was a success. We’ve managed to draw one in.” one of the guys said. “Care to get to know us a little?” he also said with a knowing look on his face. Quincy was NOT comfortable with this at all.

Shelley, after a few minutes of hard work, finally managed to break in and enter the settlement. Pretty big building with a lobby at the start. There’s a TV in the corner playing some Hallmark program no-one cares about, so the residents here just chat about random topics. That is, until Shelley made her presence known. “Oh, she’s here. Better put your hoods on, boys!” the guy speaking to Quincy shouted after watching the radar in his room. The word “hood” startled Quincy a bit, as he met a few of those guys earlier on just before he got Wilde Side. He decided to wait and stare at the screen to see what’s up while the rest of the hooded men leave the room. “Genius idea.” Wilde Side said.  
When the hooded men rushed to Shelley’s location, Shelley put her hand out and the entire room just froze in place. Then, Shelley waved her arms around in an intricate manner before kneeling and putting her hands together. Doing this, she manages to Conjure that same tiger from earlier that was slapped away by Ace. “Good to have you back,” Shelley said to her.  
With that, the two girls slam a hooded guy back a few feet, and as time resumes, the rest of the group are looking back at the guy that got hit, trying not to get hit by him at the same time. While they were distracted, Shelley throws one backward, then flips over and snaps the neck of another with her legs. Meanwhile, the tiger flips over one of the guys, double kicks two at once, and does a strong punch on another, sending him flying towards three other guys.  
“They sure do know how to fight. I don’t even think those hooded guys are trying!” Wilde Side commented.  
“I think they’re distracted by the fact that they exist. Is getting beat by a girl hard if you can’t even look her in the eyes?” Quincy responded.

“Yeah, he’s ready. Launch the program.”  
“He looks born ready! This will be no problem at all!”  
Quincy heard these two pre-teen voices, and subsequently wondered where they came from. Then, without warning, he was warped into a building lined by pillars, coated with beautiful wall art and floor textures, topped off by a mural on the ceiling.  
“What’s this supposed to be…?” Quincy asked himself. He felt Wilde Side’s presence, but the guardian was not there. He looked up at the mural and saw three things.  
He saw four mysterious cherubic warriors with swords up against a blue monster.  
“Scary monsters…” Quincy said to himself.  
He then saw those same four warriors, this time appearing as anthropomorphic animals, obtaining a red symbol.  
“An unbroken bond…”  
And finally, the biggest part of the mural. A young fox and a young bunny sharing a tender embrace, their faces running with tears.  
“Kind fellow, have you not been touched by the Radiant Soul? It is a very powerful influence, and the fact that you laid eyes on it means you know how to unlock the powers on your left arm.”  
“Who was that?!” Quincy exclaimed.  
“No worries. You’ll find out what the “Tender Embrace” is soon enough.”  
Quincy’s left arm started glowing, and with that, it painfully gravitated to the ground as Quincy struggled to pick it back up. The power output was so high that the pillars began to fall apart, the walls started to crack, and Quincy’s left hand started trembling, glowing redder with each passing second. The mural, on the other hand, is completely untouched.  
“You’re doing good so far. Tearing up my establishment is not something I expected you to do, but you’re still welcome here.”  
After all was said and done, Quincy got his bearings together.  
“Where’s your place?” Quincy asked.  
Before he knew it, he found himself in a rather regal lobby, with four kids, dressed in red, blue, black and orange, armed and ready, standing before him. The one behind them was a slightly taller pre-teen dressed in a nice suit, in a thinking posture with his legs crossed.  
“You’re all… kids?” Quincy asked.  
“Highly trained kids with a sense of right and wrong.” the one wearing red said.  
“Y’all are actually fit for battle and everything? Who trained you?” Quincy exclaimed.  
They all point to the one in the suit, a feline master of combat.  
“Pleased to meet you. My name is Percy, and these are my students, all forming the Radiant Army. The one in red is Cody, the one in blue is Raymond, the one in black is Devon, and the one in orange is Mark. Should I also mention their choice of weaponry?” Percy explains.  
“Hit me with it,” Quincy says.  
Cody then pulls out a sword and attempts to brandish Quincy with it.   
“This is your recruitment test!” Percy says.  
While Quincy did dodge the sword, he was noticeably missing his own sword. Percy threw him one, and Quincy caught it. He then clashed his sword against Cody’s.  
“Let’s see if you can keep up with this!” Cody said while rushing towards Quincy.  
“No need.”  
“Huh?”  
Quincy rushes forward, blocks Cody’s next attack by straight-up disarming him, then knocks him away softly to put him in his place. Everyone was amazed at that sight.  
“Did you see that?”  
“Did he train himself to do that?”  
“How fast did he go?”  
“Genius maneuver, I’d say,” Percy says. “However, being the leader of these graceful disciples, I possess the highest--”   
“Prove it to me. My reaction speed is coming back in full force, and if you can’t hit me, you have no right to say these things.” Quincy snaps back.  
Percy then teleports behind Quincy in an attempt to surprise him, but once Percy attempts to land a punch, Quincy flips forward, grabs Percy’s arm, then throws him into another world entirely: the Hexagon Foundation! The Radiant Army follows.  
“I wonder, dear Quincy. Do you train here?” Percy asks.  
“On my off-days, I usually do. I’m conditioned to the sights and wonders to be found here, including the more mature elements. Can you keep up with my blindingly fast speed?” Quincy explains.  
He then runs so fast that only a blur is shown behind him when he runs. Upon confronting 14 enemies spawned from a single card (Dominion Affinity #88, “Joker Card’s Fetish”), he suddenly summons 19 different swords, all rotating around him. He picks the one with the gold crossguard, then starts cutting his foes until they are reduced to bloody chunks on the ground. He then summons a Beretta Mx4 Storm and guns down the ones behind him. Then Percy appears behind him, managing to grab one of the swords that Quincy summons trying to react to his presence. Quincy takes his gun, hits Percy a few times with it, then chooses a “pizza cutter” sword to clash him with.  
“I see you’ve taken after me.” Quincy comments.  
The two clash repeatedly as they jump from platform to platform. The Geometrics keep coming in, and they retaliate in kind. They toss their swords upwards, swapping them, then they clash with each other again. This helps them realize that they are much better with their new swords than the one they had before. They clash some more, and this time Devon joins in with his polearm. Quincy briefly clashes with him before jumping off a wall and having Devon run into it before restarting his fight against Percy. Percy tries landing a bunch of sword attacks on Quincy, but Quincy’s sheer speed outclasses the speed of Percy’s attacks. Quincy then disarms Percy with one blow, then kicks him so hard that he accidentally triggers a card behind him, Dominion Affinity #705 “Red-flavored Pawpsicle Sticks”, thus summoning a crazed otter. Percy chokeslams this otter and throws her at Quincy, who cuts her in half with one slice. Percy then jumps off this card and attempts to flying kick Quincy. Quincy just grabs his foot and throws Percy behind him.  
“How old are you? Twelve?” Quincy asks.  
“We all look and sound underage, but we have the minds of perfectly functioning adults. The innocence is just there for show, really.” Percy explains. “I have another ability of mine called the Radiant Soul, but I only bring it out situationally. Before we join you, state your motive.” This is a TWELVE YEAR OLD in a fancy suit acting like he’s from the 19th century.  
“Solution City, which you may no doubt know about due to how omniscient you seem to be, has been desolated, and I want to help rebuild it. I received word from a friend of mine that the way to do that is by visiting the Divine Sanctum, repairing that, and then--”  
“You are aware that you’re repairing a city in an alternate universe ruled by a dictator with otherworldly powers, right?” Percy responds.  
“Yes. I’m doing that to repair a timeline split in half by a fellow Reality Shaper.”  
“You talk like you are one, no?”  
“Maybe. But that’s not the point, the point is--”  
“There are two people named “The Reader” in our universe. Either you, or someone running around claiming to be you, and this crazed reptile called “Black Metal.” I’m hearing reports that he used to be this armored fellow on a horse…”  
“That’s the Reader I once fought!”  
“Then he must be your target. He’s up there in the Sanctum, we’ll join you for this one. But first, you have a lot to learn.”

Meanwhile…

Another World Quincy is about to go up against several of the last remaining angels, who decided to confront the guy in his own home.   
“Wow. Right here, you decide to approach me?”  
He gets off his chair.  
“How many times do we have to do this, old man? I already wiped your place clean because you didn’t like the color blue. Well, guess what? I’m a man of color just like you are!”  
AW Quincy then summons 14 blue needles and lets them fly at one of the angels, who then sits there, punctured and bleeding.  
“Unless you want to become like that guy, you better steer clear of my path or else I’ll actually wreck your place and turn it into my personal--”  
“We’re not afraid of you. Even if we’ve lost half the things we spent years building up, we’re still gonna make efforts to replace it!” one of the angels said with determination.  
“You’re gonna need a better one-liner.” AW Quincy snarked.  
AW Quincy jumped up, decapitated the first angel by swooping down like a bat, then kicked another away after landing. He then won a fistfight with another angel by judo throwing it across the room. Another angel managed to spear him in the abdomen, but AW Quincy shrugged it off like it was a twig stabbing him instead and actually threw the angel aside. The remaining angel, who watched the curb stomp happen, tried to run away, but AW Quincy just shot it across the room, leaving nothing but a noticeable bloodstain and a charred corpse.  
“I’m not ready for another disappointment, alright?” he then said, intending on hitting the Divine Sanctum a second time.

The real Quincy, meanwhile, had fully assembled the Radiant Army. The members are as follows:  
Cody: a red-furred fox who wields a European broadsword. His armor may remind you of Robin Hood.  
Raymond, a Boston Terrier who wears blue and wields a wooden quarterstaff that can extend using chain links embedded in the middle of the staff.   
Devon, a pocket mouse wearing a black tunic, wields a Chinese ring polearm.  
Mark, an otter who wears an orange bandanna, mainly fights with his hands and feet. It shows because he was actually the only member of the Army to actually hit Quincy.  
Percy, a black bear who wears a nice suit. It’s unknown as to what his powers actually are; the rest of the Army actually make theories on this but none of them are proven right when they actually watch Percy fight.  
When they went outside and saw who their enemy was, Shelley and the tiger she Conjured were still fighting the hooded guys outside.  
“I swear they were fighting these guys roughly 45 minutes ago…” Quincy commented.  
“45 minutes in our place is 45 seconds out here,” Percy explained. “Kinda strange how time works, isn’t it?”  
The tiger throws one guy toward Shelley, and Shelley split kicks him so hard that her foot actually pierces the guy’s chest, leaving a noticeable scar on him. Quincy decides to have some fun with this while out of sight. He takes his gold-plated revolver and fires it a few times. Then he tracks where the bullets go and curves their flight path by turning a dial on the gun. By switching from one bullet to another, he actually confuses the whole crowd, even Shelley and the tiger!  
“And…. set.”  
Quincy’s words cause the whole salvo of bullets to hit the hooded guys directly in the foreheads. They’re alive till they hit the ground.  
“That takes care of that, and that is done…” Quincy says triumphantly…  
“And here I am to pick up the slack.” the last of the card suits, King, says.  
Quincy attempts to make a getaway to the Divine Sanctum using the portal that King exited from. Smart move on his behalf, but it leaves the other ones stranded to fight an overpowered Dominion master.   
“The only one who could reliably take me down just left the premises. What’re you going to do now?” King says to everyone around him.  
“I told him to. He needs to power himself up before he can do anything else related to restoring both universes to their natural state.

Quincy enters the Divine Sanctum, and only three things are there: Himself, an endless chasm filled with all sorts of space particles, and the corrupted Reader from the other world, the one that AW Quincy bent to his will using sheer power alone. Black Metal. A crazed version of the Reader that Quincy once fought before the timeline split in half.  
“Having fun yet?” Heaven’s Mirror said, teleporting in.  
“Where were you while we were fighting dudes?” Quincy asked.  
“Completing some errands, like picking up the slack that you once left behind. I’m the one who makes the plans and carries them out, you’re a mere background character that handles the main jobs. I can actually teleport out of this reality and influence another one entirely! That’s the only reason why The Denizen is still around!” Mirror explains.  
Quincy doesn’t even know what Mirror is talking about, but he remains silent.   
“Black Metal, the one before you, is the result of you going overboard with your desires, eclipsing the Reader entirely, and taking over the ruined city below you with an iron fist, eventually desolating it. I could have shown you that universe after you defeated the Reader in the main universe, but I decided to put you in it as a direct result of your errors. Those errors being your repeated usage of the Hexagon Foundation. You may not know it yet, but you’ve been to the Foundation over 20 times! This influenced the growth of your right arm’s blue vein, but your left arm’s red vein is a confusing sight to me. Where did you get this?” Mirror explained, then questioned.  
“Your ‘all-seeing eye’ couldn’t see the fact that not even I know where I got this vein from, AND the other vein being a direct result of a chance encounter with an army that DEFINITELY knows what they’re doing?” Quincy responded.  
Black Metal brandished two swords, then lunged at Quincy. Quincy responded by flip kicking him upwards, then pulling out his gun and firing at him 5 times. Black Metal can’t even get back at this, being so weakened by his encounter with AW Quincy.  
“So what do you want to do now?” Mirror asked.  
Quincy walked over and put his left hand on Black Metal, integrating him within Quincy. Doing this, Quincy gained the power of all four Radiant Genres, thus powering up his vein to the max. This gives him a new outfit inspired by the nobles of the 18th century, finally promoting him to Reality Shaper status.  
“The Greeks had four words for love. Eros, or romantic love, philia, or friendly love, Storge, or empathic love, and agape, a true sense of loyalty. This goes beyond the concept of Radiance, Mirror. Possessing this knowledge is not something a regular person can just do. This Radiant Army clearly came from outside the boundaries of which we know, thus were able to access concepts beyond what we’re capable of giving thought to. They have taught me quite a lot over the time they’ve shown me around their place, and that’s why I believe I’m capable of stretching past what I used to be capable of.”  
Quincy then stuns Mirror with a Radiant Affinity without effort.  
“You were unable to block that because it was a power beyond your control. You call yourself a Reality Shaper and you can’t even block something so simple? Some Reality Shaper. If we all have defined power levels, then what’s the point of calling our rank “infinite”? Someone with that designation would have to have no defined limits. To be able to fix entire cities with a snap of a finger… to tank massive blows by just standing there… to be able to resurrect entire nations from death by just willing it to happen. How far must we go to surpass these feats?”  
“What are you on about?” Mirror says after snapping out of his funk.  
“To handle responsibility, we must push ourselves to fight our desires. Knowing us, we would have to reach a level of divine strength to be able to give ourselves next-level thought comprehension and initiative. This is what it means to be a GOOD Reality Shaper.” Quincy says.

Then King came along and met the two Shapers head to head.  
“Looks like Mr. Boy Scout finally earned his merit badge!” King commented.  
“With a nice little muzzle on top!” Quincy snapped back.  
Both of them then took a moment to realize how dark that joke was.  
“Honestly I’d never expect that from you.” Mirror said.  
“Well I have a score to settle. First I’m gonna make him take off that mantle and have him assume the role of one of our Dominion--”  
“King, that vein is GONE. The only remnant of it still left is my ability to accurately trace cards and Affinities of both Radiant and Dominion descent.” Quincy explained.  
King then rushed at Quincy, unaware of his actual powers. Quincy then pulled out a phone and almost instinctively blocked every hit King tried to land with his hands with one arm. Even King is surprised that Quincy can do this.   
“I can predict every move you make, King. Nothing can escape the mind of a Reality Shaper.” Quincy said to him. He then put his phone away, forcibly turned King around, then kicked him away so hard that he managed to crack the wall in front of him. Quincy then pointed at the ground and launched a pink projectile. Then he held up a card and pointed it forward, substantially increasing the power of said projectile. From that card he launched two other projectiles, one that fired straight ahead, and one that came from above like a bomber plane’s explosives. King couldn’t understand this mixup. He jumped over one, got hit by another, and found himself flying back into the wall by the third one.  
“Couldn’t even approach me without avoiding my tactics. Does that show how good of a fighter I am… or does that show how weak of a card suit you are?” Quincy said to King.  
Meanwhile, Mirror went over to another room of this sector and met another of the “Metal” characters: Power Metal. He saw Apex Predator over there fighting Doom Metal with all of his ability, since Doom Metal was so strong.  
“They’re all… reptiles?” Mirror wondered to himself prior to fighting Power Metal. While Mirror can do pretty much anything that comes with the course of being a Reality Shaper (improved stats, teleportation, heightened senses, basic attacks defying the course of reality, etc.) but the Metal lizards rely on sheer strength and willpower to carry them through their battles. Mirror in particular could beef up his basic attacks by bending reality itself as he fights, thus dealing more damage to his enemies. He can even attack with alternate realities this way!  
King and Quincy had a pretty long fight. Quincy was actively seeing this man's next attacks coming as he responded in kind, with either Radiant explosives or through simple hand-to-hand combat. Then Quincy decided to end the feud right there by hitting King so hard that he clutched his stomach in pain, then teleported behind him and cut his head off with one swipe.   
"I could put up a better fight against a Reality Shaper." Quincy commented. Then he was thrown into the final world *with* a Reality Shaper.

"You're not fixing that world yet. I still have yet to cut the timeline into pieces!"

AW Quincy had a score to settle with Quincy. His friends couldn't come over because AW Quincy's Metal reptiles were fighting them at the moment. Apex Predator had sheer strength backing him up, but Doom Metal's deadly poison attacks kept him at a distance. Mirror could nail impressive combos on Power Metal but every time Power Metal struck back, it struck back hard, and Mirror often found himself tumbling back because of its utter strength.  
"You have a choice. Go back, and I can lock you out of my side of space while you save your friends and watch the world burn, or you can fight me and just forget about them and watch them die to my ultra-powerful soldiers. Pick your poison." AW Quincy said.  
"Well, they are the guardians of World A, aren't they?" Quincy said.  
"Come again?" AW Quincy asked.  
"World A. It contains both Solution City and believe it or not, right under us; Zootopia. Even if one side can't interact with the other, you're still endangering both cities. This is the gateway from where we travel to other worlds. Reality Shapers are supposed to keep watch over this! Why do you want to destroy the world with Dominion so badly?"  
"Because the Radiance is dominating World A. I want to find a balance between that and this in order to master the Twin Element. The ultimate source of happiness and arousal."  
"You can't have both at once!"  
"Twin Element #1989 would like to have a word with you."  
AW Quincy then summons that Twin Affinity, and becomes one with it much like how Quincy became one with Black Metal.  
But then, Black Metal radiates within Quincy and says "Think... Think of.... Quincy? There's... something above you...!"  
Quincy then looks up... He sees the clone of himself he spawned prematurely handily destroying Power Metal by twisting its arm off and then breaking its head open!  
The clone them makes its way to Doom Metal, powers in hand.  
Doom Metal attempts to poison Quincy with its dagger, but Quincy's superior speed makes it impossible for Doom Metal to even touch Quincy. In response, Quincy does a powerful kick combo, then summons a thousand "reality shards" to cut Doom Metal into tons of bloody chunks.  
"Now back to the show. Look above you, dear ones!" Quincy said through his clone.

Quincy readies his attention to AW Quincy, with his Twin Affinity in hand. He used it to transform himself into a being that could actually destroy the world if he wanted to. Death Metal.  
Unlike some of the transformations you see elsewhere, Death Metal is about the same size as Quincy. The main difference is that his body is covered in a dark material that acts as armor and an attack extension. In addition, he possesses some of the same high reflexes that Quincy has on him. This would make him a formidable foe, but Quincy has a few more tricks up his sleeve.  
First, Quincy tries a disarming blow followed by a kick. Death Metal dodges both of these attempts and tries to get back at Quincy with a punch. He dodges that too, and they both realize that the other one can't even get hit at the moment. Confused, they both resort to using their powers. Death Metal starts with some rock geysers, but when they fail to hit Quincy, Quincy changes the arena to that of an upstairs storage room made entirely of wood, surrounded by boxes of varying sizes. The sun pokes through the window, and this bothers Death Metal none at all. Quincy produces a ring of fire around him, then spun around so that his outstretched hand would be caught in the fire, thus increasing its size and imbuing it in fire. This actually manages to harm Death Metal, and after a 14-hit combo, Quincy launches Death Metal at the wall. Quincy gives chase, with Death Metal seemingly unable to do anything. However, what Quincy didn't see coming was Death Metal's drill kick. Quincy attempted to teleport away, but as he did so he actually flew back a bit! Death Metal landed and immediately conjured a bow. In response, Quincy Conjured a master vulpine archer. They rapid-fired their arrows at each other. When they ran out of arrows to fire, they jumped at each other. The archer, Robin Hood, did an axe kick, immediately grounding Death Metal. Surprisingly good with his feet, Robin's kicks repeatedly swept Death Metal off his feet, and eventually, into the wall. That's when Quincy and Robin charged up a special move. Quincy augmented Robin's bow with pure Radiant energy, allowing him to fire his bow without any arrows. Robin took one fated shot at Death Metal...

The whole storage area collapsed. Death Metal was speared by the arrow, which crippled his defenses, then crushed by the column, which gave him a mass flashback of all the things he did under Quincy's guise in the Hexagon Foundation. From there he remembered a few things that were a direct consequence of the Radiant Army intruding into his business. No matter how hard they tried to fend him away, doing so wasn't the important part. The important part was exposing him to enough Radiance so as to get used to its influence and change for the better. They weren't even trying to beat him - if they did, they would have floored him on sight. This is what Death Metal thought of last before he was forced to live on as a mere influence. An influence of the Twin Element.

Quincy made it back to the Reality Shaper's field, and there were Mirror and Predator, having seen everything Quincy did.  
"Don't say anything. I'm about to restore the timeline back to where it belongs." Quincy says.  
"You mean to tell me...?" Predator questioned.  
"Yes. This timeline and the other one were originally supposed to be linear. However, allowing the other Quincy to defeat the otherwise unstoppable Reader allowed me to finish the job by destroying the weakened Death Metal--"  
"Are you going to fix it?" Mirror asked.  
"On it."  
Within moments of Quincy raising his hand high, Solution City's mass and color were gradually restored. All of Zootopia came back, and the world was free of harmful influences once again. For now.  
"What's next on the list?" Quincy asks.  
"There's plenty of things to do. Why don't we take a peek around the other side of World A?" Mirror suggested.  
"I was thinking about heading to the Artist's Guild." Predator recommends.  
The other two look at him before thinking about what he said. With that, they exit the distorted room and find a new pastime.

\----------------------------- EPILOGUE ---------------------------------------------------------

Meet Emerald. Standing at 4'8, this cyan rabbit wields two cool-looking custom guns: Missionary, which resembles a Colt 1851 Navy Revolver with a silver touch, Cowgirl, which is a modified Ruger Blackhawk with a metal/rubber handle as opposed to a wooden one. He also has one on his back that fires massive cannon rounds known as Reverse Cowgirl. He also has a gun embedded in his leg called Twenty-Three. Emerald is very good with guns; he can reload all three of his on the fly, dodge and block incoming bullets, and even use a revolutionary system known as Bullet Drive. This gives him the ability to perform all of these feats at a lower cost, and more. In his spare time, Emerald contributes to the Artist's Guild. Doing so, he has amassed an impressive gallery numbering in the dozens. He is very proud of what he does both in and out of combat, but he does have a tendency to change the history of the city underneath his home a lot to a risque degree. He also doesn't mind filling in the gaps of the Hexagon Foundation in both the safe and not so safe sides. As a result, he has some degree of control over the Twin Element. He was one of the people swept up by the catastrophe that hit the timeline-split Solution City, and ever since its recovery he was very happy to be back where he belonged. Emerald is a nickname: his true name is unknown and he doesn't bother revealing it.

Joseph (red fox wearing a hoodie), too, is another member of the Artist's Guild who is surprisingly powerful in his own right. While he does reuse Quincy's sword select system, the way he does it is simpler. He only has 5 swords instead of 19. Each one is based on a different scenario that his chosen character from the city down under (Zootopia if you aren't aware) has gone through. Using a certain common red fox as his guardian, Precious (something akin to a Stand), his defenses and offenses are raised to decent levels and his attacks pierce through shields and other forms of guarding. Due to being a strong force that emerged from the seeds of a discarded shell and went up in power virtually overnight, his strength and defenses are unparalleled to begin with.

Gayle. Another rabbit, but with a fur color more aligned with the bunny cop from downstairs. He often wears casual clothing when he's more chill, but you often see him going around with a full suit of red body armor. This is because all of his powers are linked to that armor, and if he's not wearing it, he can't "do the magic" (not my words, nor Gayle's). Once he IS wearing the armor, however, he becomes one of the strongest forces of nature to walk Solution City. When he and Joseph did a quick spar one day, Gayle wiped the floor with Joseph because the latter couldn't find an easy way to dent Gayle's armor. Gayle, however, is way more of a lover than he is a fighter, so he tends to be more negociable than the other members of the Guild. If he has to, however, he will resort to action.

They and Quincy were all tasked to defeat a massive polygonal dragon outside the City's walls by one of the staff in the Artist's Guild, Scott Cheatham.

[Gayle] "What for?"  
[Scott] "Well, apparently it's making a crapton of racket. I heard some words come out of the beast's body, but all it amounted to was some heated controversy."  
[Gayle] "Was it political?"  
[Scott] "Cannot say at all--"  
[Joseph] "I'm all in. Where is this dragon at?"  
[Scott] "Right outside the boundaries of the City. if you see a massive orange circle, then you're getting closer to it."  
[Gayle, Emerald, Joseph and Quincy] "En route!"

The walk from the Guild to the boundary was not a short one; this was going from one corner of a quarter of the city to another. They eventually made a passthrough in a hotel because that had the side-effect of having a detour leading right next to the boundary.

[Quincy] "Who was in charge of mapping this City out?"  
[Emerald] "I don't know, but putting a hotel next to the outskirts of a city does not seem safe to me at all."  
[Joseph] "There is actually some civilization right out there where the dragon is. Thus, it actually seems logical!"  
[Emerald] "So Solution City really does mirror Zootopia."  
Then, all but Emerald shuddered upon realizing where and why the dragon was out there.   
[Gayle] "The mere thought of not putting this civil unrest where it belongs... it just burns me up."  
[Quincy] "Yeah, but why so randomly, and why so abrupt?"  
[Joseph] "It's obviously the prelude to something much worse."  
[Gayle] "What could that be?"  
[Joseph] "Do I look like a fortune teller?"  
Emerald got one quick look at the dragon's appearance. After seeing some notorious hate symbols marked on its scales, he took a step back, sat at the table and shotgunned the whole cup of beer sitting there. Nobody else noticed him doing so.  
[Emerald, to himself] "Just a quick cup of that to get my mind off the stress. The last thing I want is recent events imprinted on my mind."  
With that, the group, after some mingling, agreed to set off with mixed valiance.

The Heavily Armed Dragon was large and foreboding, but everyone had ranged weapons on board (except Joseph, who only had his close-range attacks, and Quincy, who had to Conjure Blaze the Cat) so it was fine. While it did tank a lot of hits, It only fell short when everyone brought out their full strength. Then, Joseph started picking it apart using a melee weapon that resembled a claw on some chains. Him ripping the dragon's head off with it caused its outer body to fall apart, causing thousands of small spheres to spill from it.

[Joseph] "What was that all about?"  
[Quincy] "Am I the only one seeing this?"  
Everyone turns around towards Quincy.  
[Gayle] "Why? What's wrong?"  
[Quincy] "That wasn't supposed to happen. Joseph has only five swords and not six. I didn't see that claw sword when he pulled out his armory the first time around. The dragon was also way larger than this when I looked at it from the room we were in earlier. Like, Godzilla-sized. In addition, I saw a massive town when I saw the dragon from the room but when we marched over here now it's just a mild pasture. What's going on?"

[Invidia] "Good on you for figuring that out."  
[Quincy] "Who's there?!"  
Everyone except Quincy runs out of there as Invidia dives down and meets Quincy as the entire battle arena changes to a chunk of rock flat on the top over a sea of clouds.  
[Invidia] "I've been here for years. Longer than you have, honestly. The only thing you've come down here to do is to take what I have. What do I have, you ask? a LOT of things. Potential, abilities, a desire to perform more--"  
[Quincy] "Look dude, I've barely even known you. What did you say your name was?"  
[Invidia] "Invidia."  
Quincy, realizing that he's up against a literal sin, quickly pulls out his gun and fires at Invidia. Invidia just steps to the side, dodging it.  
[Quincy] "What just happened?"  
[Invidia] "The bullet slowed down for me. When any projectile heads my path, the field around me begins to slow down, giving me protection against bullets that you can't see. I'd like to try to get to know you a little better, though..."  
He then brandishes a mirror image version of one of Quincy's own swords to fight him with. In response, Quincy summons the same sword quickly enough to block Invidia's blow. They clash multiple times and repeatedly block each other's blows. It all came to a head when Quincy swung twice in one second, catching Invidia off-guard as he reeled back from the impact of the blow.  
[Invidia] "Let's calmly put our swords away."  
He claps twice, and the rock arena changes to something resembling a small office, complete with wallpapers on the walls and a table or two backed up against the wall in addition to some metal shelves on the right. Invidia moves to the right, anticipating Quincy's bullet. Once it hits the wall. Invidia stops time out of nowhere and floods Quincy's front with knives, only for Quincy to invade Invidia's world of stopped time (he is a Reality Shaper after all) and shove the knives away. After Quincy puts his gun away, he attempts to punch Invidia, but he blocks it. Quincy's strength wins the day and he manages to flip Invidia over, though not without jumping first to get some clearance. Invidia lands feet first and does a gesture egging Quincy on to keep fighting him. Quincy relents, but then Invidia jumps over him and attempts to attack him from above. Quincy flip kicks him out of the air, and Invidia gains his bearings back as he prepares a fighting stance.

Meanwhile, two girls, Frostbite (wolf) and Mistwalker (fox/bunny), are settiling a dispute rather violently over one of them returning to Solution City.  
[Mistwalker] "Why exactly did you leave and show up to this bumf--- fantasy world?"  
[Frostbite] "Solution City doesn't need me anymore. I'm all cooped up here where my true interests lie. Now if you want--"  
Mistwalker jabs her with her own ice lance, then does a flying knee strike to launch her across the room. The two continue their brutal hand-to-hand in the next room, where they try to hit each other, but continue to parry each other's blows.  
[Mistwalker] "At least I had a better reason to ditch the City for a while."  
[Frostbite] "A while? People say you've been gone for a year!"  
[Mistwalker] "Nobody said I couldn't make a return visit."  
Frostbite lifts Mistwalker up and throws her to a wall, seemingly knocking her out. Down for the count, sure, but she looks like she's ready to get back up.

Meanwhile, Invidia and Quincy's tussle carry them through several dimensions at once thanks to their ability to travel to other worlds (and skipping ahead by 4 days). It doesn't quite stop there either. Invidia and Quincy land in a crystallic arena, and that's when Invidia revealed his true form: a white cat like creature. He then pulled out 6 knives, three in each hand. Before he could throw them, however, he was stopped by Quincy's new guardian: Wilde Side EXTRA. Wilde Side teleports Quincy out of the area while deleting the one Invidia's in, erasing the guy for good.

But that's not the end of it. A new guy named Sugarfoot arrives in Solution City, claiming to be from an alternate universe.  
[Quincy] "As if I don't have enough adversaries as it is..."  
[Sugarfoot] "It must get on your nerves, seeing as how I'm from a world where you once caused everything to collapse, and that shelter your Predator friend claims to live at almost ceased to exist..."  
[Quincy] "Wait, what?"  
[Sugarfoot] "And you did it. I watched you and fled to this universe to evade the corruption you had spread upon that one. Your next line is: But I didn't do anything!"  
[Quincy] "But I didn't do anything--"  
[Sugarfoot] "Should I show you exactly what you did? You killed a guy, made another one leave the pre--"  
[Quincy] "Pass. Sounds like a waste of my time. Besides, I'm not stupid enough to believe that you're not the one who actually did it all."

Quincy summoned Wilde Side EXTRA and made him beat some sense into Sugarfoot. Sugarfoot chaged the arena to some hallway and turned all three of them into 8bit sprites.  
[Quincy] "Real clever."  
[Sugarfoot] "There's more where that came from!"  
Sugarfoot then kicked Wilde Side aside and took out a Thompson submachine gun (complete with a drum magazine!) and fired away at the guardian. Quincy called him back and took the hits himself by summoning a bubble-like shield. Quincy then realizes where he is in terms of power level.  
[Quincy] "You know, I became a Reality Shaper just 4 days ago, though it doesn't feel like 4 days ago."  
[Wilde Side] "That's because it wasn't 4 days ago. Invidia was distorting the passage of time. It's currently August 6th."  
[Quincy] "But I fought Invidia on the first!"  
[Quincy and Wilde Side] "Oh no. I have a bad feeling about this."

Quincy then teleports behind Sugarfoot and flip kicks him to launch him, then summons one of his swords to try to impale him. While the impalement did not work as Sugarfoot flipped out of hte way, Quincy was able to use the sword to launch him forward through some walls. That's when Wilde Side appeared in front of Quincy, stopped Sugarfoot in the air, and cut him in half on the spot.

[Wilde Side] "Next time, let's not bring in uninvited guests."  
[Quincy] "Look, what could our next challenge possibly be?"  
[Wilde Side] "Someone with an actual set of powers."  
[Quincy] "...."  
[Wilde Side] "If you can actually keep up instead of transferring your soul to other places, getting coked up on that, then maybe you could actually get the scoop on your enemies' powers instead of waiting on me to sort out the problem."  
[Quincy] "Wait, how much control over the storyline do I got?"  
[Wilde Side] "As much as I am willing to give you."  
[Quincy] "You mean to tell me there is no fourth wall?"  
[Wilde Side] "You can do what you set your mind to. Lack of effort equals lack of detail. This holds true for anything you do. As the most powerful ally you've ever had by far, I believe that you can expand upon your enemies' powers as long as you are actually focused on doing so. Quincy, if you don't do this next job right, I'll just skip to an event that I've already had planned."  
[Quincy] "What's my next job?"  
[Wilde Side] "I've gotten reports about this cat wandering around Solution City...."  
[Quincy] "Ain't nothing to worry about--"  
[Wilde Side] "Ain't no feral cat either."

Splinter, we'll call him. That's not his actual name, for he knows his name, but doesn't bother to tell anyone. Not even any Reality Shaper will know his real name, for he doesn't trust any of them. He carries a notable RP British accent, and he identifies as a European shorthair domestic cat with gray fur and white markings. He looks like a child, but despite his height and appearance he is a quite capable adult. His cowboy outfit certainly stands out against the urban clothing of Solution City's residents. While wandering Solution City on a fence, he found the Artists' Guild with Quincy standing before it, unable to move.

[Splinter] "Ay, what'cha lookin' at?"  
[Quincy] "I....I can no longer move...!"  
Splinter looks where he's looking and sees a character that he's very knowledgable about.  
[Splinter] "Ah yes, you've become blinded by the essence of cuteness, have you not?"  
[Quincy] "The f---'s a "cuteness"?"  
[Splinter] "How do you not know what that is?!"  
[Quincy] "We have Radiance, but I'm not sure what you're talking about."  
Splinter then summons his guardian, Teen Spirit, and disappears behind the fence. He then has his equally humanoid guardian (Species: Aegean domestic) summon a Trajectory Node at his former position. He then takes aim with his Smith and Wesson M1917 revolver, a gun that he's had for most of his waking life.  
[Splinter] "I have a good feeling that something's not right with him. I'm gonna find out for myself."  
Splinter fires a bullet charged with Radiance at the Trajectory Node, and it flies right around and goes for Quincy. Quincy jumps back.  
[Quincy] "You trying to give me a heart attack?!"  
Splinter jumps back from behind the fence and lands on top of it.  
[Splinter] "I very well could, your behavior is mighty suspicious..."  
[Quincy] "This is nothing you need to worry about!"  
[Splinter] "What did you say your name was again?"  
[Quincy] "Quincy."  
[Splinter] "...Hello me. Meet the REAL me."  
Splinter jumps down and attempts to drill kick into Quincy. While Quincy does grab his legs and attempts to slam him into the ground, Splinter lands on his arms and slams Quincy into the ground.  
[Splinter] "The brain of a cat is specifically wired so that when they fall down, they always land on their feet! What is it with you lagomorphs being so fast and yet never being able to take a hit? We are far faster and stronger than that? Do you ever wonder why lions have the reputation they do today?"  
Quincy rushes at Splinter, but Splinter seemingly teleports behind Quincy.  
[Splinter] "Didn't see my fabulous-looking watch, did you? Time is by my side in this fight."  
He then summons Teen Spirit, clad in armor this time. He makes six clones of it and makes it rush after Quincy. While Quincy does fight the clones, Teen Spirit itself isn't harmed. The Trajectory Node Splinter summoned ahead of time doesn't reach Quincy's eyes though, and in time, a carefully placed bullet blindsides Quincy. Splinter then reloaded his stock by making the bullets fly back from where they came.  
[Splinter] "I never run out of bullets! When I run out, I simply call them back! My gun doesn't work like others do; the bullets I use don't require cartridges! They just fly out of the gun like they are! This way, I don't need to clean my gun or worry about it jamming! The perks of being a gunslinger are numerous!"  
[Quincy] "Did you come out of a western or something?"  
[Splinter] "Sort of."  
As soon as Quincy summons Wilde Side, the guardian drops a major bomb:  
[Wilde Side] "As the other half of Apex Predator that broke off when the timeline was split in two, I have to return to him. As for you, I have a surprise for you. Something that I know you'll love."  
Wilde Side leaves Quincy for Apex Predator, and soon enough, when they finally reunite, Splinter and Quincy suddenly float in the air!  
[Splinter] "I did say I was the real me. That's because you, Quincy, did not live to see the timeline reset. You're a mere shell - a mere, jealous shell - of a new person dropped off to be the real main character. That would be me."  
[Quincy] "I'm dead?!"  
[Splinter] "Dead man walking. Not sure how, but you live."  
They land in a black void continually flickering with Teen Spirit's image.  
[Quincy] "There she is again! Staring daggers at me"  
[Splinter] "Wait wait wait one second. "she"? I only recall there being one--"  
Quincy then has his body interpolate in 18 different colors, which sends Splinter through a portal containing the same number of parallel universes.  
[Splinter] "He cannot control himself around the "Radiance", can he?"  
Apex Predator and Quincy himself passed him by, and the latter's uncontrollability sends Splinter into a white void room.   
[Apex Predator] "Can you hear me around that noise? Not even the strongest Reality Shapers are able to settle this man down! He is destroying EVERYTHING!"  
Solution City was then shown to Splinter in a wrecked state. He could not believe his eyes.  
[Splinter] "That was a perfectly good city until he met me...His mind is jacked. I thought this would be a normal thing to resolve. ....Wait, where is Teen Spirit?!"  
He can't summon it anymore. That white void room is actually cream colored. Apex Predator and Teen Spirit where nowhere to be found. To replace them, a dark, bear-like entity showed up with red-and-orange markings on it. This was Symphonic Metal, Quincy's last ditch attempt to erase everything in Solution City and set fire to World A, conquering it for good.   
[Splinter] "A black bear....are you kidding me?"  
Symphonic Metal swiped its paw across the air, sending a wave of energy colored exactly like Metal was towards Splinter's direction. Splinter evaded it and spun his revolver's chamber.  
[Splinter] "This is Bullet Drive, a larger-than-life method to improve the combat skills of any gunslinger! It's different depending on the gun, but mine can do this!"  
He then fires a black hole that fires a spead of 5 bullets every 2 seconds. Symphonic Metal wasn't just a tanky bear, however. It rushed forward, bypassing the black hole, and grabbed Splinter. It then attempted to do a spinning piledriver on him, but Splinter froze time by turning his watch's dial.  
[Splinter] "Good idea, but my watch tells the correct time no matter where I am. Thus, I don't need to spin the dial, but when I do, time bends to my will and stops right then and there!"  
Splinter then manages to slip from the bear's grasp and land on his arms. While the bear is hanging up there in the air, Splinter takes the time to re-engage Bullet Drive and fire more bullets than he has into the bear's body, doing a splendid about of damage to it before time unfreezes. Then, the bear convulses in pain and lands on the ground hard.  
[Splinter] "Should tell you exactly how fearless I am, no?"  
Symphonic Metal wasn't very happy about what Splinter did to it, but the latter could hear Apex Predator in there egging Splinter on to destroy the bear and repair Solution City. This gave Splinter the incentive to put the zombie bear to rest right where it stood.  
[Splinter] "I don't even know how much punishment this bear can take before it goes for good. My bullets are doing decent work to this bear, but it just got right back up, ready to kill me."  
Splinter then heard a faint voice from Apex Predator...  
[Apex Predator] "Have you tried clashing what it knows with what you know?"  
[Splinter] "Cats have excellent hearing, good to know!"  
This is what Splinter does next. He puts away his gun, and rushes over to Symphonic Metal. He grabs the bear, and asks it:  
[Splinter] "Tell me what you know."  
One chokehold from Splinter later, and their thoughts clash. Psychokinetically, they tussle over their motives and desires. It reaches a stopping point when Splinter's thoughts reach Quincy's most valuable one: Being better than everyone else.  
[Splinter] "This is why you died."  
Once Splinter takes that over, Symphonic Metal begins to vanish, its user finally being put to rest indefinitely. The white void room disappears, and both Splinter and Apex Predator lands in a restored Solution City. However...

[Apex Predator] "Is that a black hole?"  
[Splinter] "That bear summoned it here to try to take us out! We might make it, but I doubt this city will..."  
[Predator] "Why not?"  
[Splinter] "Because I come from another version of this city. An alternate universe where everyone you know existed, but in a different form. Even the city itself was radically different."  
[Predator] "What was it called?"  
[Splinter] "Zootopia."  
[Predator] "You mean..."  
[Splinter] "Yes, the one right under us."

The day turns into night.

[???] "Get out of my head!"  
This unnamed figure and what appeared to be Symphonic Metal were fighting around the black hole, trying to keep a hold on the state of the world.  
[Splinter] "Is that..."  
[Predator] "Symphonic Metal...? And is that Quincy?"  
It was indeed! Both of them thought Quincy was dead, but he brought himself back to life by hanging on to Symphonic Metal while IT was bringing itself back to life. Once the two started to coexist, they've done nothing but fight. At one point, their fight escalates to the point where once Symphonic Metal was about to grab Quincy, the latter pulled off a magnificent stunt:  
[Quincy] "Do me a favor, and never come back here again."  
Quincy held his arm up and managed to stop time! A robotic female voice then came from his arm, now surrounded by a glowy cream-colored aura.  
[Female voice] "Conjuration complete."  
Just then, that aura flew out of Quincy's arm and drove itself into Symphonic Metal.   
[Quincy] "It's not a Conjured character. It's a force."  
Just then, time unfroze, causing the aura to quickly fly into the black hole.   
[Quincy] "Predator! Splinter! Brace yourselves!"  
[Splinter] "What for-- Oh. Oh no. This is not going to end well."

The black hole was expanding, the aura trying to keep it in check. Eventually, it expanded to a point where it engulfed everything. The aura, named "Father Balder", spent its very will trying to diffuse the problem while preserving Solution City. Zootopia, the city underneath, was not affected in the slightest.  
[Quincy] "Why not?"  
[Predator] "Balder is protecting it."  
[Splinter] "Or rather, it has its own force protecting it."  
Gayle, Emerald, Scott, and Joseph were all in the black hole as well.  
[Emerald] "Go ahead! Tell them about the goddess protecting everything you know!"  
[???] "Her Majesty's name is Judith Laverne Hopps."  
[Quincy] "You mean, the one fro--"  
[???] "Yes. Her. I am she."  
[Everyone else] "Where'd you come from?"  
[Judy] "Splinter, you can't stay here for much longer. Come with me."  
[Splinter] "To where?"

Splinter got his answer when he was thrown beyond the black hole's range, into a mysterious, desert-like area. He looked around to check to see if everyone was still there. No response. Then a wicked sandstorm kicked up and warped him to another location entirely - a rather familiar looking town populated by mammals wearing rather rugged, western-style clothing. A fox passes him by, and Splinter asks him a question.  
[Splinter] "Excuse me, what's the time and date?"  
[the fox] "May 17, 2016, 2:16 PM."  
[Splinter] "That was 4 years ago..."


End file.
